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Huawei Battery Upgrade Means Dramatically Faster Charging For Mobile Devices
Computerworld reports a welcome development for everyone with battery powered portable electronics, which might just have applications further afield, too (like electric cars): Huawei has developed a battery based on conventional lithium-ion chemistry but tweaked with the addition of graphite atoms bonded to the anode. From the article: That change means faster charging but not at the expense of usage life or a sacrifice in the amount of energy that can be stored in each battery, [the company] said.
It was developed by Huawei research and development subsidiary Watt Lab and the company showed off two prototypes in videos posted online.
One of the two batteries has a capacity of 3,000mAh (milliampere hours) -- about equivalent to the batteries in modern smartphones -- and can be charged to 48 percent of capacity in five minutes. The second has a much smaller capacity of 600mAh but reaches 68 percent of capacity in just two minutes.
You misread. It's ok, I made the same mistake the first time I read it: it's poorly written.
Look at the times though....both of those phones were charged to ~50% in five minutes. That's some fast charging. (Why didn't they report the time to a total charge? I don't know).
Stanford also developed a kind of fast-charging battery recently, using aluminum-ion cells. This is something a lot of people are researching, so eventually one of the ideas is going to make it into consumer products. It's just a matter of time.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Even thought it could take some more time to complete the charge from 49 to 100%, what's really great is when your smartphone is agonizing at 1~2%, you just need to plug it somewhere in a coffee shop, work, ... to get to 50% charge in just 5 minutes, which is usually - depending on what phone you have - enough until the evening to then charge it fully.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Have you been asleep? Around 1990, a rechargable AA battery had 500 mAh capacity, took 14 hours to charge and had memory effect issues (NiCd, remember?). These days AA means 2500 mAh NiMH rechargable in under 1 hour. Li-ion is even better but generally not available in AA (cell chemistry means a much higher voltage per cell).
So that's 2 entirely new battery chemistries and a 5-fold increase in capacity.
Also, you may not want to read about early research, but I do. If you want nothing but product announcements, go read manufacturer press releases instead of coming to Slashdot.