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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.
They do get better
I have a 4850mAh lithium battery in my RC car that can discharge a peak of 630A and 315A continuously. That's 100% to 0% in less than a minute.
The smaller battery has less surface area.
There is probably some other limiting factor that's restricting the charge current. The 3000mAh is being charged at 18A and the 600mAh at 12A.
If I had to guess it would be heat. A smaller battery has a larger surface area to volume and the internal structures have less material between them and the surface, so a lower thermal resistance.
It ISN'T 3000 vs 600. They have developed BOTH. the 3000mAH charges to around 50% in 5 mins, while the smaller one charges to 68% in 2 mins. Both are a huge leap forward. depending on exact times for charge they are actually both charging at similar rates, the larger one slightly faster.
Even though it's in the original FA, I wouldn't expect a competent editor here to let "graphite atoms" by. Sheesh.
And the worms ate into his brain.
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."
http://www.oppo.com/en/technol... Faster charging doesn't make it into consumer products? 30 minutes for 75% charge. Though I find it charges faster than that (about twice as fast), but they don't advertise the best case, they advertise the worst case, so they'll always meet it.
The problems with heat were there, but were evidently solved well enough to sell it. And in over a year of use, the battery is holding up much better than my Galaxy S3 did after a year. Though I noticed a drop in standby time after one of the Android updates, but I even reverted to verify it was the update, not age that caused it to drop to standby under 48 hours.
Learn to love Alaska
Wake me when vendors actually agree on a common way of drawing the required power from the USB chargers. Sure there's a standard published but when will vendors actually follow the current standard, or in the case of Apple follow any standard at all.
What if that 3000mAh battery has 0.001V = 3mWh while that 600mAh has 230V = 128Wh. TFA does not say anything meaningful, just that its author is idiot. Explanation how to read mAh was funny in that context.
No. Fucksakes. Amp-hours is NOT a unit of energy capacity. It is meaningless without being told the nominal voltage. Ok, so if it's a single (series of) lithium cells it's gonna be 3.7V, but why be ambiguous? The unit we're after Watt-hours, right? Do you pay your electricity bill by fucking Amp-hours? Of course not, that's nonsense.
When you see the shiny new Anker portable battery pack on amazon rated at 20000mAh for charging your fondle-slab so you can keep burning through the next 10,000 losers on tindr while you wait for the bus, maybe you're aware your device is charged on 5V and you might think you're getting 100Wh for your money. But you ain't, are ya? No, they mean 3.7V x 20Ah = 74Wh.
Ok just one more beer and we can forget about this ugly outburst.
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...
The power tools, garden tools, battery pack accessories market always likes the idea of more power, less recharge time at a site per interchangeable power pack. Cell phone users, dslr, led camera lights, small flash systems, camera slider systems used away from mains power might like more power, quicker for a creative project.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Thanks for coming to slashdot and read the story even though you saw that stuff already on google news.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
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).
It's standard marketing procedure to recognize a weak point and pretend like it doesn't exist, being careful never to voluntarily mention it. I don't know if that's what happened here, but Huawei is a corporation with a Marketing department, and this is such a widespread practice as to be my default assumption unless compelling independent evidence to the contrary is presented.
For the majority not reading the article, it is the article that mistakenly mentions atoms of graphite (instead of carbon), the summary is just quoting the mistake
Graphite is a form of carbon. Diamond is a form of carbon. Baryonic matter in general is made of atoms (okay, if you REALLY enjoy being anal [Freud would be pleased], the electrons are leptons). Since it didn't say "atoms of the element graphite", I don't see the problem here, other than your (and others') urge to be pedantic. Yes, they could have said "molecules of graphite", but still, there are much more egregious examples of shitty writing in the summary -- the kind a minimally-competent editor would have corrected -- if you enjoy pointing out that sort of thing.
doesn't a lithium ion battery already have an anode made of graphite?
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.
If you ever have been stuck waiting for an e-cig battery to charge for an hour or more at 500mA USB, you might want something like this.
Although USB type C might be needed, perhaps not strictly but it would be a good hint that the "Power Delivery" specification be supported. Or doing without, and simply using 3 amps at 5 volts it would be quite good already.
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.
Battery History and physics is a fascinating subject. And once you know about the physics involved: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://chemwiki.ucdavis.edu/An...
You can see we aren't even close to done yet. OP has no clue about battery advances, Compared to even five years ago, we've come quite a way.
But once we pay attention to the physics, and not Top Gear or disgruntled NYT reviewers, there are real reasons to get excited about the potential of electric vehicles.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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).
Because we now have an attention span less than a goldfish
http://time.com/3858309/attent...
5 minutes is inconceivable to today's smartphone addicted. A total charge? Might as well be to the end of the universe. Call them back when charging time is 5 seconds, and they might comprehend (5 seconds is within the thought focusing of 8 seconds the modern person has)
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
How long until Tesla or someone else uses this? would be kinda cool to *fill up* in 5 minutes like conventional cars.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
In my completely (full disclosure) anecdotal opinion yes, these technologies DO make it into consumer products, but the change seems to be incremental, not all at once. So I've seen batteries get better over time, but I've never purchased a product with a battery that is a game changer.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
"These days AA means 2500 mAh NiMH rechargable in under 1 hour."
Physics says no to that when your charger only outputs 1Ah.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yeah they do. Especially the ones that improves the rate at which you can charge your battery.
It is better for the phone maker if you have a relatively low capacity battery with rapid charging than a high capacity battery with slow charging, since the former will be charged a lot more often and will get a lot hotter when it is charged and will therefore wear out a lot sooner, which will prompt you to buy a new phone.
Sony is the one company that is consistently doing the opposite of this, by making high-end Android phones that last for two days, but that does not seem to be a winning strategy for them.
Given Huawei's checkered history with corporate espionage (such as their complete theft of Nortel) and ties to the Chinese government, I'll wait for a better company.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
If you have a charger that only outputs 1Ah, why do you still have it? Does it output 1Ah every time you plug it in, or just the one time? Either way, end that madness and get a decent 2A charger: http://www.thomasdistributing....
you just need to plug it somewhere in a coffee shop, work, ... to get to 50% charge in just 5 minutes, which is usually {..} enough until the evening to then charge it fully.
Which is also a whoping 18 amps down the cable (or 6C in charger parlance). Which (due to RI^2) is quite some thermal loss, and require large cables.
Which is also 90W, as much as a heavy laptop charger (definitely *NOT* the kind of mini charger that your Asus eeePC/etc. uses. Think more the kind of heavy huge brick that Lenovo packs with its bigger Wxx-series laptops [=100W], or the biggest of the Dell laptop charger [=90W] sold with some of their docks)
For the "50% in 5 minutes" charging to work, you would need:
- to move from the 5V used by regular USB to higher voltage in order to reduce (due to P = UI) the current to something that doesn't require the same size of cabling as an electric oven or a domestic electric car charger (= 15A to 25A appliances).
USB-C could support "USD Power Delivery" which asks for 20V support when charging 100W - thus only 5A current.
So you need to move everyone to USB-C before starting this. (Good luck. See how people are eager when they need to re-buy every single other cable and dock that they have)
- massively improve charger technology so the charger isn't 3x bigger that the phone it self. (is not coming anyway soon)
or design special charger that can sustain 100W for 5minutes and then limit their output for a certain time to avoid burning (seems to be the only realistic option)
or have all the coffee shop deploy a network of 20V / 100W standardised chargers (good luck with that. See how long it took until trains started to equip their coaches with mains current for laptops. And how not every coffee shop is filled with 5V USB ports every where).
But you will definitely NOT quickcharge your phone with a miniature wall wart that looks no bigger than a standard mains plug.
You could in a pinch use your laptop/chromebook USB-C powerbrick to quick charge your phone. But that means that you have a backpack with your laptop in it. At which point it would be easier to plug the phone to the laptop itself, and have it slow charge to 100% over the charge port. That's if you don't also have a powerbank in said backpack.
So although it's a nice idea, it will take some time and effort until it works smoothly, due to the shear amount of energy.
----
Coincidentally, 5minutes is *ALSO* the 50% charge time you would get if the technology gets ported to the cells used by Tesla in it's car.
(well not that surprising given that basically it's your "phone to 50% in 5m" situation only massively parallelized as Telsa batteries are just huge array of the same simple lithium cell).
(But that would require Tesla Supercharger able to pump 810kWh instead of the actual 135kWh. Yup, almost a megawhat to quick charge your car. And don't even start to think about the kind of cabling and/or voltage needed to push that power.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
when your charger only outputs 1Ah
Maybe you should stop buying $1 chargers that can't even get their units right.
No, no. The parent was right. 1A*h*.
The 1$ charger is able to maintain 500mAh for 2 hours, after which point it breaks. And explodes. And puts your dog on fire in the process. You should really not buy 1$ no-name electronics from shady chinese manufacturer.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
"5-fold increase in capacity."
Compared to other advances in electronics, 5x over 25 years is terrible. Even combining with the 14x charge rate gives a doubling at longer than 4 years.
The 1$ charger is able to maintain 500mA for 2 hours, after which point it breaks.
Damn. Typo. I ruined my joke.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
One of the single biggest problem with traction applications has been deliberate patent encumberances which are still echoing through the manufacturing arena.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
One of the single biggest problem with traction applications has been deliberate patent encumberances which are still echoing through the manufacturing arena.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Yup. But in the end, it's only delaying the inevitable.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.