Slashdot Mirror
Samsung Develops 'Graphene Ball' Battery With 5x Faster Charging Speed (digitaltrends.com)
Heart44 writes: A number of outlets are reporting a Samsung laboratory breakthrough allowing smaller and faster charging lithium-ion batteries using three-dimensional graphene. Digital Trends reports: "Scientists created a 'graphene ball' coating for use inside a regular li-ion cell, which has the effect of increasing the overall capacity by up to 45 percent and speeding up charging by five times. If your phone charges up in 90 minutes now, that number will tumble to just 18 minutes if the cell inside has been given a graphene ball boost. What's more, this doesn't seem to affect the cell's lifespan, with the team claiming that after 500 cycles, the enhanced battery still had a 78 percent charge retention. The graphene coating improves the stability and conductivity of the battery's cathode and electrode, so it's able to take the rigors of fast charging with fewer downsides." The technical paper describing how the graphene ball works and how it's produced is published in the journal Nature.
I've been waiting a long time for a development like this.
We're bringing it back
Fireball!
Just curious, how dissimilar are these 'graphene balls' from buckyballs? Both are made from graphite, and are spherical.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
You're right, batteries are hard, we should just give up. Lead acid was good enough for our grandparents, it's good enough for us!
bought up and shelved by oil companies ?
Can you put a big-ass one of these things in an electric car to get reasonable charge times (like, around 5 minutes for around 500 miles)?
What phone takes 90 minutes for a full charge?
All the current Androids do 50% in 15 mins and 100% within 45 mins.
I smell bullshit.
With all the advancements in battery technology you would think the battery in my car would be a lot smaller by now.
I'm charging my S8+ ~1.5 a day. 500 charges means that after just 1 year the battery is at 78% of capacity, What happens after 1.5 years?
Even for those who charge only once a day, 500 charges is ~1.5 years, which is less than the common 2-year lifespan of the phone.
Increasing the battery density probably won't help either, as manufacturers will again make thinner phones instead of increasing capacity.
They haven't worked out how to integrate a blockchain yet.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It has quite an explosive potential.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Is Blazing Fast!
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
... and laugh at all the people who said Tesla's recent announcements regarding charge rates can't happen.
Elon say's hello.
So you can buy a new phone every other years.
sudo rm -r -f --no-preserve-root /
SUCK MY GRAPHENE BALLS NERDS
They have come to the market. Why do you think that we have personal computers in our pockets that allow for a nearly full day of computing, that are reliable enough for product makers to directly solder them to the electronic devices, and normally last past the expected device lifetime.
The problem is perception.
1. Batteries are boring. they are not flashy, they don't make your apps directly run faster. They just make the cool things other technology uses last longer.
2. Technology is using more power. My Phone, has an Ultra High resolution display, Gigs of ram, a fast processor comparable to some modern laptops and desktops. Sensors and Gyroscopes... and this is a normal consumer devices, Compared to 10 years ago, where we had a flip phone with a 100x100 pixel display (color is optional) And it made phone calls and texts, and a cheap camera, where most people had a separate camera. All this stuff uses more power. So device makers are sticking to a 20 hours battery under normal use. If the battery can last longer, then they put more stuff and speed to the device.
3. We forget the problems of the past. We needed user replaceable batteries in the past, because they would last an average of about a year. Meaning we needed to replace them after a while while our device is still relatively new.
4. We use devices more on battery. Old cell phone usage was just to make calls and texting, but for the most part the device is in our pocket, or charging. Today we as a culture are in front of little glowing squares. We are using these devices all day. Even for laptops, when I have a few hours of meeting I don't bother bringing my power cord, because I know my laptop will last the duration. Back 10 years ago, you always brought your power plug for your laptop, because the device may last 3 hours that is with the screen dimmed all the way down and no apps running. Today I can use my more powerful laptop for the 3 hours quite normally, granted if I go overboard it can vary.
5. Each breakthrough takes years to get out, make sure it works and is safe and reliable, and a fit for such devices. So if it takes 5 years to get to the market. the 3x improvement is the 3x improvement from 5 years ago, and with the other improvements going on when it gets released it is only 1.25x faster. Battery technology doesn't follow Moore's Law it is more linear. So we don't get the same awe effect that we do when we see new technology.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
for their next flagship phone.
For the past decade-and-a-half or so I have read at least 80 reports of 'Breakthrough in Battery Technology'
All of them claimed to boost battery power, longer lasting battery, and faster charging time
If they are so much better, as claimed, I think the market would welcome them with open arms
Funny thing is no one bring them onto the market
Why is that??
They ARE bringing them to market.
It's not that batteries haven't drastically improved. They have.
The TRUE problem is the telemetry-riddled always-listening power sucking shit they're bolted to.
Here's a perfect example of KISS design maximizing efficiency; the Nokia "candy bar" phone. Fucking thing would last a week on standby, with some obscene amount of talk hours. Smartphone charges could probably last two weeks or more, IF they were not being used as personal video streaming devices. People demand a smartphone does everything for them now. Turn off features, cut out 90% of the extraneous bullshit, and (spoiler alert!) battery life would likely increase ten-fold.
I have some ni-cads batteries here you can try out against a modern battery and then you can tell me they haven't gotten any better.
Smartphone charges could probably last two weeks or more, IF they were not being used as personal video streaming devices. People demand a smartphone does everything for them now. Turn off features, cut out 90% of the extraneous bullshit, and (spoiler alert!) battery life would likely increase ten-fold.
I don't play videos on my phone. I surf the web a lot on my phone. Bluetooth off, location tracking off... etc. Have a pretty hefty battery (why I picked it). A year of use, and I can't make it through the day anymore without charging. I don't have too much crap installed either. I do use mine for the basics.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
#4,593...that hasn't made it out of the lab. How many stories, about new battery tech, that would allow longer life, shorter charge times have their been in the past couple years?
The article was published in Nature Communications - Nature Publishing Group's open access journal. Nature itself is a journal that has 3-4x the impact factor of Nature Communications. This probably doesn't matter to most people but it is a way to gauge how novel/impactful the research was perceived by the scientific community.
Serious question: What's the shelf-life of a Lipo cell? I've looked at a bunch of datasheets and I can't find any specs on this. I'm not talking about the self-discharge rate but rather if I get a cell from the manufacturer, which is usually at 50% charge, and let it sit for several years without ever cycling it, what happens to the cell's performance? Does it lose the ability to hold charge? Does it lose the ability to deliver the rated current output? If it degrades over time, what's that degradation rate? If you know the answer, can you point me to a datasheet or research paper that spells this out?
The distinction between bombs and batteries is vanishing. Both technologies have the exact same goal, to cram maximum energy into minimum space, so it is inevitable that they will merge.
Do you guys write these things down on sticky notes to save for the next Samsung article?
Lets see, not clever, unique, or innovative. Your like the online equivalent of my 6 y/o telling me the same knock knock joke he heard last week for the hundredth time.
I hope your 6 y/o knows the difference between "your" and "you're"
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
"Apple has courage. We have balls."
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
location tracking off
At the OS level, sure. Don't think that stops the apps themselves. GP did also reference
telemetry-riddled always-listening power sucking shit
but you didn't quote it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The paper is missing a very vital test/data to accurately predict the life time of a battery. If you measure the amount of energy a cell takes to charge and the amount of energy if can give after that charge (with high precision), you can pretty accurately predict the real world life of a battery. Accelerated life cycle testing isn't accurate for batteries.
Here's the thing: I must've heard of a new revolutionary battery technology at least once a month for the past 5 years or so.
The problem is always mass production.
Can Samsung churn out batteries with graphene balls for all devices that currently use Li-po batteries at similar costs and similar speeds?
If not, then it won't be replacing anything. And this story is yet another one for the archives.
To counter this, I can buy a dumb phone that stays on for one month without any charging, or with continuous phone calls and texting it will last 7 days. 5 days if I'm using it's crappy web browser and low-res screen. If cell phone makers instead of giving me a pointlessly thinner phone, just gave me a larger battery I could use it for a whole day without needing a charge.
1) They'll just make the battery smaller, I'd guess. Why would a company whose job it is to sell hardware want that hardware to disrupt their product cycle (cynical, I know)?
2) DON'T charge you battery to 100% or discharge to near-zero. I don't have links, but there are some neat articles around the internet regarding the chemistry of li-ion batteries and charge/discharge. It's shown that charging to ~80% and discharging to only ~40% allows the battery to last far far longer; that's what I do, and so far it's working out very well.
-
If cell phone makers instead of giving me a pointlessly thinner phone, just gave me a larger battery I could use it for a whole day without needing a charge.
So buy whatever cell phone you like, buy a combination phone-case/external-battery for it, and you'll have pretty much the functionality you want. Problem solved.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Revolutionary. Nuff said.
great balls of fire
Nullius in verba
There are different types of advances in batteries. Sometime someone come up with a new chemistry or design. In this case they were looking at a problem (degradation of the electrodes) that had a known solution (coating the electrodes with graphene) but there wasn't a manufacturing process to do it. So they have come up with a very innovative way to do it that should be "easy" to add to manufacturing. This is probably one of those incremental breakthroughs that is closer to reality than a lot of the others we seen.
Proper link: https://www.nature.com/article...
Assuming production models actually live up to the hype the next question will be one of cost. If it costs twice as much to make but only gives you ~45% more storage and a faster charge time it's only going to find a few niche applications. If it is on parity with standard battery production costs then Samsung is going to get a lot of interest from a lot of applications (some grid storage, vehicle batteries, etc).
that's what I do, and so far it's working out very well.
"labor saving devices" are training you to take care of them.
If you want to use a basic phone, and having new battery technology to make it last for weeks, that is fine too. However most of these phones are just excess inventory of older phones, with decade old batteries. Or just an old designed not build for the batteries.
However being that nearly everyone I know of needs to sleep for at least 4 hours every day, they can use that time to charge their phone.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There is another problem: Moore's Law. Semiconductors have improved exponentially, improving computing power a million-fold over my lifetime. So people, and perhaps especially nerds, have come to expect a similar rate of improvement in other fields. But that almost never happens[1]. Batteries have dramatically improved over the last 15 years, through steady incremental progress. But still very slowly compared to improvements in computing power, thus giving the illusion of a lack of progress.
1: Some technologies actually DO progress even faster than Moore's law. Two that I can think of: Hard disk drive capacity, and the cost of DNA sequencing.
I am missing your counter argument. My point is new batteries are better, we just don't see it because popular devices use more power. I am not saying you need a popular smart phone, just that technology for these phones advance in a way to allow a full day of usage as part of their design requirement, if the design runs longer then a full day, then that means they can probably put more features in. If battery length is important, you can make such a choice.
Or is it that you are taking the friendly jabs at your phone at work or school personally.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
To counter this, I can buy a dumb phone that stays on for one month without any charging, or with continuous phone calls and texting it will last 7 days. 5 days if I'm using it's crappy web browser and low-res screen. If cell phone makers instead of giving me a pointlessly thinner phone, just gave me a larger battery I could use it for a whole day without needing a charge.
I picked up a pair of 10k mAh battery packs for $30. Each one of those is enough to charge my phone 3 times, which would be enough to last over a week. It looks like you can get 20k mAh battery packs now, so just buy one of those, tape it to your phone, and it will last twice as long as your continuous-use dumb phone.
That's simply not true. I only use my phone for calls & text, plus about a half hour a day playing the occasional game of sudoku (not exactly a computer-intensive game). I'm lucky if it lasts half a day without recharging, let alone a day. This is true of my current phone and my previous one, and was true even when the batteries were new OK, when the batteries were new, they would typically last 12 hours, but would need recharging within 18 hours). The one before that was a flip phone, and it lasted a week before I needed to charge it unless I made a lot of calls, in which case the battery charge still lasted a few days.
Yeah, I have a small "dumb" mobile phone from Samsung. It just has a 128x128 color LCD (no touch) and a *real* numeric button pad. It's super-small, only cost $7 and it goes nearly two weeks between charges!
It receives calls, makes calls and does SMS messaging.
Hell... it even has a game of "Super Jewel Quest" and an FM radio built into it.
Even better, I have a pre-pay plan and only need to top up with $20 credit every two or three months because it uses no data.
If I want to watch a video, send email, edit a document or do other computer-y things, I use a computer or a tablet.
Horses for courses!
|| I surf the web a lot on my phone.
Scrolling takes juicy-juice.
Those things suck so often though.
But you have to find a charger. I'd prefer to not worry about it for days or weeks at a time.
Will it fit in my pocket? I feel like not really.
If you truly only use your phone for calls & text, why not buy a random Nokia? They are still available, and they have a MONTH of standby time now. You'll lose Sudoku, admittedly.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
In my case - I have background processing turned off. This still doesn't stop a 50% increase in battery drainage.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Indeed. The operating systems on these devices are simply performing too many undocumented and unwanted tasks to allow the CPUs and radios to ever enter a true idle or low power state. There is no reason, other than inefficient software, for a device to last less than several days with the screen off if, as we're constantly told, the screen is the biggest power draw.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Odd. I have an iPhone 5S bought new, shortly after it came out, so it's four years old now, and with iOS 11 I'm starting to wonder if I might benefit from replacing the battery.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
For the past decade-and-a-half or so I have read at least 80 reports of 'Breakthrough in Battery Technology'
All of them had comments complaining that these technologies never came to market
If these ACs are so insightful, as claimed, I think they'd notice how dramatically batteries have actually improved in that decade-and-a-half
Funny thing is they also miss the many responses pointing this out,
each time
Why is that??
buy one of those, tape it to your phone I think this fails the "elegant hack" test.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I believe that the OS no longer honors the settings you set. Certain things that you were able to turn off in iOS no longer seem to turn off. If I select no background processing, that means mail should never be active, yet, somehow, it sucked 20+% of my battery in the last 24 hours, in background processing mode, no less. Phone is listed as 30+%. The interesting thing is, I hadn't used my phone that particular day, meaning it is most likely the weak cell reception where I was and whatever algorithm it uses to connect to the tower. iOS 11 is much more aggressive in attempting to connect, as iOS 10 would last 2 days in the same location under the same use case and the drop in battery life happened the same time as the upgrade to iOS 11, except then it was really bad, with the phone lasting maybe 7 hours without recharging. I'm now up to maybe 14, but can't for sure say that the phone is in the same state as pre iOS 11, since the battery charge/recharge cycles were greatly accelerated and another few months of (ab)use can add up on an already heavily used 3 year old phone.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Things like phone and messages I would expect to run in the background regardless, but I would also expect to see them using less than 1% battery if you haven't used them. Of course, I've never really looked at the IOS battery usage menu that closely, as my iPad all last days, with the one I use as a Chromecast remote lasting weeks between charges; does IOS not list the radios separately from the apps using them?
I do think you're right, though, that the OS ignores some of those settings, at least for it's own uses. In both IOS and Android, mind you, so that's not a dig at Apple. One place where Android gets it right, though... And it's ironic that it's a direct result of the fragmentation I keep hearing people complain about... The vendor can still choose to honor htose settings, because they can build from source after adding they I own support layers, which include their own versions of those settings. A double-edged sword, for sure, and usually used to crap-up the device, but I know the settings work on my S8+ because I actually see the impact they have on battery life.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Things like phone and messages I would expect to run in the background regardless, but I would also expect to see them using less than 1% battery if you haven't used them. Of course, I've never really looked at the IOS battery usage menu that closely, as my iPad all last days, with the one I use as a Chromecast remote lasting weeks between charges; does IOS not list the radios separately from the apps using them?
iOS only lists battery usage by app. The usage also doesn't equal 100%, but is merely representative of percent of battery usage by app. So background connectivity at the OS level is not included. The phone "app" IMNSHO should never be active unless I activate it by calling someone or receiving a call. Same with Messages, as both rely on OS level connectivity, and the OS services those apps when something inbound happens, or you activate them yourself. In IOS with Messages there's slightly more going on, because a connection is made to the central server that stays "alive" to indicate you're online. My thinking is the ping rate is set too high or whatever they're doing, and they could significantly lower the battery draw by making it passive and utilizing the SMS path for activating Messages.
Regarding iPads, multiple things are in play here - I can actively use an iPad for 10 hours a day without recharging, far more than any iPhone I ever owned with comparable use which movies and games. There's no cellular phone draw on mine anyways, and messages appear to run on a very low power wi-fi ping. The nexus tablet I have works about the same near as I can tell so Android/iPad battery performance is roughly on par based on the 1 Android tablet I have for comparison.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
The phone "app" IMNSHO should never be active unless I activate it by calling someone or receiving a call. Same with Messages, as both rely on OS level connectivity, and the OS services those apps when something inbound happens
iOS may service those apps but, then, it's taking on the same role those apps perform for themselves on Android. Those apps have to listen to the radio for incoming calls and messages, so they will use power even when backgrounded; and even if the OS is listening on their behalf, whether or not the OS lists that usage under the app.
In IOS with Messages there's slightly more going on, because a connection is made to the central server that stays "alive" to indicate you're online.
If we weren't talking about a service meant to support full-time connections, I'd say the keep-alive was necessary but, for this use case, it's just silly. We're talking about devices which, for the most part, are kept on and connected to the network 24x7, there's no reason to time out those connections (thus, no reason for a keepalive); there are plenty of other, more sensible, ways to manage them.
For example, the Messages servers could maintain at most one connection per device and just assume connection parameters have not changed until the device changes them itself or message delivery fails. When network conditions change, the phone would reconnect on its new network and the old connection would then close; the phone could even close the connection to Messages before turning off radios, so Apple's servers wouldn't have to maintain the connection. If sending a message to the phone fails, or the user removes the device from their iCloud account, the server could likewise close the connection. As an added safeguard, perhaps the connections could time out after a week of inactivity, but I'm not sure how necessary that would be -- again, this is a service designed such that every device is connected 24x7, Apple's servers must be able to handle that many open sockets at once or the service wouldn't work.
The above is a bit sparse on details, there are a few scenarios I don't cover in that explanation, I think we're enough on the same wavelength here that I don't need to detail every consideration I made when coming up with this.
In general, though, I think we're in agreement that both major mobile OSes are choosing not to honor certain settings which prevent them from monetizing us like they want to. And think about it, before you say Apple doesn't monetize location data: why would they ignore your choice to not provide it to them if they weren't?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The phone "app" IMNSHO should never be active unless I activate it by calling someone or receiving a call. Same with Messages, as both rely on OS level connectivity, and the OS services those apps when something inbound happens
iOS may service those apps but, then, it's taking on the same role those apps perform for themselves on Android. Those apps have to listen to the radio for incoming calls and messages, so they will use power even when backgrounded; and even if the OS is listening on their behalf, whether or not the OS lists that usage under the app.
This is going to be interesting. The phone "app" is the app that allows you to dial, etc. The cellular radio connection is held and maintained by the underlying OS, in both iOS and Android. The apps merely register and call those APIs. I am assuming the phone app does this also, because that's how all other apps communicate with the cellular functionality and, at heart, that's all the phone app is really doing. The only difference is that the phone app can be activated by an inbound call, hence the monitoring piece, but that should be a callback into the app at worst, and a launcher/activation call at best. Messages should work the same in Android (SMS being a feature inherent to the cell tower connection itself) and for Message (FaceTime/iMessage functionality) it is a data driven connection that runs on network connectivity by preference with a fallback to cellular connections, if allowed. Inbound would either require the OS to maintain and monitor the data connection or do some interesting management of radio state. I'd vote for the latter, but that could also have some bearing in areas such as mine where we have multiple overlapping towers in a weak area. And that just indicates that Apple or Verizon's cell tower connection management software may be crappy.
In IOS with Messages there's slightly more going on, because a connection is made to the central server that stays "alive" to indicate you're online.
If we weren't talking about a service meant to support full-time connections, I'd say the keep-alive was necessary but, for this use case, it's just silly. ...When network conditions change, the phone would reconnect on its new network and the old connection would then close; the phone could even close the connection to Messages before turning off radios, so Apple's servers wouldn't have to maintain the connection.
That sums it up pretty precisely, although the notification for turning off radios is a pure send, as there's no guarantee that there's an actual connection available. Apple's servers have to already do everything you say.
In general, though, I think we're in agreement that both major mobile OSes are choosing not to honor certain settings which prevent them from monetizing us like they want to. And think about it, before you say Apple doesn't monetize location data: why would they ignore your choice to not provide it to them if they weren't?
Are they actually gathering data? Are they ignoring your choice? If you turned on Find My iPhone, location data is on by necessity, but I haven't confirmed whether data is being sent back continuously or if there's some real time tracking algorithm. It probably is something I should look into one day, but right now being able to find my phone if I forget it somewhere (happened once within the family) is more important to me and the time is not available. I can think of several ways the system could do function and still maintain privacy. I also know that Google tracks you.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.