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Battery life has long been a major concern in mobile. It’s only recently we’re finally seeing small strides being taken with how chip vendors and smartphone manufacturers are approaching the issue. This typically involves either creating additional low-power CPU cores, or throwing higher mAhs into our smartphones and tablets. But what about charge times?
As our phones become more powerful (and bigger), and we begin to demand more out of our devices, we really need to start thinking about other avenues to explore if we hope to break free from constantly being tethered to a wall socket.
It was early last year we saw Qualcomm’s attempt at speeding up our device’s charging times with their Quick Charge 1.0 technology that can be found in most current smartphones (the recently released HTC One M8 even features Quick Charge 2.0, though compatible chargers wont be available until later in the year).
And while being able to charge a phone in under an hour and half is all good and dandy, how cool would it be if you could charge your smartphone in under 30 seconds? Suddenly, that 15 hour battery life doesn’t sound so bad.
StoreDot is an Israeli startup introducing their prototype charger and battery technology that does just that, taking a near depleted smartphone to a full charge in 30 seconds or less. The charger, which is about the size of your everyday laptop charger, was shown doing just that on a Samsung Galaxy S3 (support for additional smartphone models is also in the works). The battery itself features biological semiconductors made from “naturally occurring organic compounds” (peptides) and short chains of amino acids. While quite large right now, StoreDot says it should roughly be the size of current smartphone batteries by the time its ready for release.
The best part is you might not even need to wait until you’re old and grey before we see this in the real world. StoreDot says that when the product becomes commercially available in 2016, pricing should be about twice that of the average phone charger. Right now, they also have another project aimed at making the charger smaller for more practical use.
The biggest question we have is how long these batteries will be able to hold a charge, and how well they handle our power hungry mobile devices. You can find a video of the prototype charger in action below.
[WSJ]
will our batteries be ruined after this rapid charging ?
Everything in life comes with tradeoffs, and it’ll be interesting to see what comes of this tech. I mean, even if I had to replace my battery with a new one every 6 months, I’d probably still be down. 30 seconds is insane.
I don’t know, the note 3 charger is still doing me justice, ill have to pass
Note 3 charger is so fast. And the battery lasts and lasts. I don’t care about battery tech anymore. Improvements are welcome but, I’m actually happy with my charger and battery now.
I have to agree. I use my phone so obsessively the battery life degrades within a month anyway, sometimes I have to charge while using (which I know is supposedly super horrible but whatever, I have a phone to use it) and the ability to have a fully charged phone in less than one minute would be too convenient to pass up, even if the battery had to be replaced three times a year. I’d just stock up at the beginning of each year or something.
That investment doesn’t sound good if the battery is costing you like $20 per battery. You’re spending an additional $60-$80. You’re better off where you are now. LoL!!
What about for those of us that don’t have removable batteries? Replacing your phone would be a pain– if that indeed is the case?
A good slogan for this charger would be.
“Finally, when getting done in 30 seconds is a good thing!”
This is yet another disadvantage of getting phones with non-removable batteries. Just stop buying them and they’ll go away.
That sucks cause I’m a Nexus man..
I love Nexus too, especially for tablets, but google’s crippling of USB mass storage mounting is just insane. I hate it! And no removable storage or batteries just makes it seem like they’re pushing crippleware as far as the market will bear it. Google Experience Devices seem superior if you can get them to work on your carrier.
You’re right, but that crippling they are doing is making that price point possible– which is why I buy Nexus. Much like this speedy charging charger and it possibly ruining batteries. It’s a trade off.. I like the Nexus price. I’m on at&t so getting on a network isn’t an issue. I’ve thought about GPE devices though.
Crippling USB mass storage mounting actually cost money. I argued the first Nexus 7 (N7a) was intentionally crippled, and sold at a near loss, to both expand the tablet market yet to preserve it for other makers to bring full-featured devices in (no USB OTG mass storage, no micro-SD, no video out). Google did not want to own the hardware business, so they sold crippled products.
From the N7b onward, though, there was no need for the continued crippling (hence the video out options). It seems to me that google is using the Nexus line to push the market to the always-connected-with-limited-local-storage model that would most benefit their ad servers. All other things being equal, GPE devices are more functional for the end user — unless you live on google’s campus with ever-present and unlimited wireless connectivity.
nah
If the battery died within a time frame less than a year, I don’t think they’d make the battery non-removable. I wouldn’t even get a phone with this battery, regardless. That is not worth it.
Not fast enough! Haha!
and the battery charges gets used up within 2 months, meaning you would have to buy a replacement battery or ship the phone back for a replacement.
sure, if you plan on charging your battery 4x a day.
I have a GS3..I’ll take it as is!!!!! Now take my money!!!!!!!
Looks like a Galaxy S3 in the video, not an S4. FYI.
Maybe that’s why their slogan said “inspired by nature”.
The tech is still 3 years way so i fully expect them to have the degradation issues ironed out by then.
Just a quick note. You said ‘“naturally occurring organic compounds” (peptides) and short chains of amino acids.’ Peptides are short chains of amino acids. Get enough of them in a chain that perform a function and you have a protein. FYI.
If you dig a little bit it turns out they are using 2 amino acid long peptides to manufacture quantum dots. So yes organic but from what I understand the quantum dot technology is not new (it’s been in use for years even in laboratories) but the manufacturing is new.
Cool. They aren’t really charging an S3 though. They are charging a large battery attached to the back of an S3.
Have they released any specs? How many miliamps is the charger outputting? Is it running standard 5v? How many mahs in that hulk of a battery? I assume that battery is somehow hard wired into the Phone and not recharging the Internal.
Yep, my 3 questions mirror your own. What is the Amp Draw of the charger (is it something sane like 10A, or insane like 40?) Is it a stock battery? Are they hooking directly TO the battery, or what?
explosions
Take. My. Money.
That thing will kill your battery in no time, and imagine all the “my phone exploded” stories that will surely follow. lol
Sweet baby Jesus.
I don’t think most people understand the implications. This is a new battery type, not something for today’s phones. Batteries would have to be replaceable if lasted less than 2 years under EU legislation (the fair lifespan of a device). If I only had to wait 30 seconds, I could have a much smaller battery and smaller phone and charge a couple of minutes a day. Maybe in the car, maybe in the office, at home etc, easy to do.
Nano, nano
Side note. I love that the people on this site can focus on a topic and stick with it. I must be looking at Gothamist too much because as soon as I read the post and saw “Israel” i thought “oh god, there’ll be lots of comments yelling ‘boycott!’, ‘palestinians’, ‘terrorists!’. Refreshingly mature here.
Wonder what happened to the high school kid that did this last year…
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/05/22/18-year-old-invents-under-30-second-phone-charger/
I’ve been wondering the same thing, vaporware?
I thought she had built a prototype?
Isn’t a little odd that the stopwatch on the bottom of the display isn’t moving while the person is in frame? It would be great, but I’m a bit skeptical now.
The stopwatch started when the battery was plugged in and stopped when it reached 100%.