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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.
Buckyballs are much smaller. These siloxane lumps are 10-20x larger than a typical buckyball. You'll probably find that the vapour deposition will result in several sheets of graphene depositing at different points and growing together into a not-quite-perfect coating. Not enough to break the functionality, but enough to disqualify it from the comparatively geometrically pure buckyballs, which have mind-boggling symmetry.
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!
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.
If their 45% capacity increase estimates are accurate, you will not have to endure as many cycles per year, and for the average user not charging as often as you do, that will likely translate to a couple of years. Besides, after a year, all current smartphone batteries are running at some level of degradation. It's essentially expected.
As far as it not lasting, smartphone factory warranties are typically one year. Manufacturers don't give a shit how long your service contract is. That's your problem. Their only job is to manufacture hardware that lasts through the warranty period, and not much longer. Revenue is maximized that way.