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Smart phone life why the delay can not be a substantial increase

2017-05-31

The first generation of iPhone has been familiar with the personal computing equipment has brought a revolutionary, and it has been released for 10 years. Although this phone completely changed our way of interacting with personal electronic devices, it is not perfect. In fact, as one of the key elements of mobile phones, iPhone life of the first generation can be described as very bad.

Although the mobile phone technology is still in the high-speed development, the processor faster and faster, camera pixels are getting higher and higher, memory and storage space is growing. But as troubled by the first generation of iPhone one of the biggest problems, poor endurance continues to this day. For most smart phones, 36 hours of life is almost the limit.

Although the news reports from time to time to introduce some of the so-called front-end battery technology, known in the future so that smart phones can provide up to a week of battery life. But the distance between us and this goal is no more than 10 years - that is, Steve Jobs told us every day to charge the phone then - a step closer.

Why is the development of smart phone batteries so slow? How far is the perfect smartphone battery away from us? This article will explore these issues.

To pursue distant dreams

   You may say, to enhance the life of any difficult? The battery capacity to expand, or from the mobile phone manufacturers to earn billions of profits which is used to engage in research and development is not enough?

Unfortunately, things are not that simple. Developing new batteries is not just investing money, hiring the best scientists and engineers, or consuming time. And to improve the processing performance is different, the production of higher energy density batteries need to create a new scientific field.

"The performance is in line with Moore's Law, so the transistor will be slightly reduced every few years, so that we can put more transistors in the chip, and thus get higher processing performance." London Empire "Said Dr. Billy Wu, lecturer in electrochemical science and engineering at the Institute of Design Engineering.

"For the microprocessor, the most important thing is to shrink everything, and for lithium - ion batteries, if you want to improve the energy density, it needs to fundamentally change the material you put into the battery.

This is not simply to replace some of the chemical elements so simple. You need to carefully balance the various elements of the mix, because a little attention may cause serious problems.

  "At the moment we are using NMC, which is a nickel-cobalt-manganese ternary lithium ion oxide material, and in the next few years we will be able to increase the battery density by adjusting the mixing ratio of the three materials," he explains.

"As the material did not change, we could continue to use the previous production line, which could lead to 10-20% improvement in battery performance."

10-20% of the battery upgrade is not high, at best, only the smart phone charging interval extended from one day to 2 days. With many years of research and development in exchange for this level is clearly not the consumer expectations of technological progress.

Why can not quickly solve the problem of life

While consumers and the industry as a whole are calling for batteries with higher energy densities, the wait may continue for some time.

  "Battery production is a bit like a black magic," Dr. Wu told us, "it is so long because people have to try every combination.We want to increase the increase in life time, and in order to ensure this, We have to test. "

Even to find a suitable alternative material, not to say that simply replace the line on the line.

"In the battery, silicone is seen as an alternative to graphite.As its energy density is 10 times the latter, we can imagine the future of mobile life is extended to 10 days instead of 1 day," Dr. Wu said, But the problem is that this material will produce a substantial increase in volume.
"When the battery charge and discharge, the volume of graphite will produce 10% expansion and contraction, which we can bear, but the silicone in the charge and discharge volume will be expanded by 300%, imagine that if an electric car Using a 1-meter-wide battery, it will suddenly become larger to 3 meters wide when charging, which obviously can not be practical application. "Dr. Wu explained.
"We need to deal with some of the engineering and technical difficulties."
Capital is also a key point in battery research and development. What is said here is not for research and development funds - that is quite sufficient, but because of the relevant technological breakthrough contains billions of pounds of profit potential, hundreds of manufacturers, scientists and research groups are looking for Breakthrough.
But these resources have not been brought together, R & D which did not follow the principle of profit first, this lack of industry-wide way of cooperation will affect the technological progress.
"People who are experimenting with new battery technology are doing a lot of research and development," says George Paparrizos, senior director of product management at QUALCOMM. "Many of them are at an early stage, and a R & D project is usually a few years ahead of time "
When will we be able to make significant progress?
That related technology research and development when to make life a week of smart phones become a reality? Unless you can readily accept the Nokia 3310 instead of iPhone 8 or Galaxy S9, or have to continue to wait.
"The development of a new chemical material takes roughly 10 years and £ 100 million, and this size of the economy and the microprocessor is immeasurably," Dr. Wu said.
This is only the first stage. After spending a lengthy development phase, you will need to spend 10 years to make these new materials safe and stable for large-scale commercial applications.
"A new chemical material usually takes 10 years to achieve commercialization. Take the original lithium-ion battery patent as an example, it was released in 1980, Oxford University, Sony was the first in the last century to achieve its 90's commercialize."
"There are already some chemical materials that have been shown to extend battery life.It is being discussed that adding sulfur or silicon and other materials to the battery to make the so-called lithium air battery, but this battery will take 10-20 years to develop perfect."
However, although the new battery chemical materials from the real application of the application for a long time, this does not mean that there is no technological progress in the field.

fill vacancy

Although the speed is very slow, but the smart phone life is indeed rising. However, due to other mobile phone components, power consumption is getting higher and higher, such as larger size, higher resolution display, battery life is only a small increase in battery life to keep the status quo.
Want to optimize the performance of existing battery technology is not just technical experts. Mobile phone manufacturers and parts also make every effort to use every trace of battery performance.
"Battery technology innovation is a long-term goal, and during this period, we have been focused on reducing product power consumption." A HTC spokesman told us this.

"For example, HTC 10 PowerBotics system can improve the efficiency of mobile phone hardware and software.Through the automatic detection and shutdown of high energy consumption applications, it can upgrade up to 30% mobile phone life.
"Such as HTC Sense Companion this software can be based on the current power consumption of the phone and the user's usual habits to make predictions on the remaining life, allowing users to understand how long their phone will be no electricity.
HTC is not the only way to take this way to optimize the survival of their own manufacturers, their competitors are also trying to extend the life of their own equipment. At the same time, Qualcomm such parts suppliers are also developing their own solutions.
"Qualcomm also carried out some efforts. Xiao Long 835 is the first use of the new 10nm process produced by the processor.When we promote the development of processor technology every time, the leakage will become less and less, the system internal efficiency "Said Paparrizos." Every year we improve our battery life and turn it into system performance, and our annual goal is to achieve this goal more efficiently. "

"The number of energy efficiency improvements will not be great, because you can only achieve up to 100% of the energy efficiency upgrade."

The risk of battery experiments
So that mobile phones tend to perfect on the road there is another huge obstacle, it is security.
Last year's Samsung Galaxy Note 7 battery bombings made the public aware of the difficulties and dangers of experimenting with battery technology, while also making the entire smartphone industry more cautious in crushing battery performance.

The more energy the battery is put into, the more it becomes dangerous, "Dr. Wu said." While we do this, we have to pay attention to whether it will explode. " "
Galaxy Note 7 event is not just a public relations disaster, but also make mobile phone manufacturers become more timid, thus delaying the development of battery technology.
"The Note 7 event did give the battery a lot more attention.We do not always see how the OEM is using the battery, and some people may press it more than others," Paparrizos added.
"According to my guess, they may be a bit too far ahead of the limits of energy density, without taking into account security factors, which is one of the industry's most important concerns and may also be a factor that hinders battery technology development." Dr. Wu Said.

The future of smartphone research and development

Although the processor performance and camera resolution will continue to improve every year, smart phone batteries in a short time may still be unable to keep up. However, manufacturers are also focused on the battery technology is also increasing.
"The battery is one of the concerns of the industry," Paparrizos said. "Throughout all the smartphone technology, the battery is a kind of dragging the hind legs and found that some technology in the hind legs, people will put more attention on Its body, and finally let it keep up with technological progress. "
Battery technology will be forced to keep up with the pace. Although it takes some time, but this day will always come.

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