If I had a nicke for every time someone wrote about BATTERY BREAKTHROUGH FOR MOBILE DEVICES, I'd be a fucking rich man. Not frickin sharks with laser beam and a master control at the head of my conference table with buttons that send my disloyal or incompetent minions to their peril rich, but at least gangsta droppin the benjamins on the bitches rich.

Ni-Cad and Li-Ion battery technology, commonly found in our portable/mobile gadgets/smartphones, are bound by the current known laws of both physics and chemistry. There is *no legitimate* known effective alternative (whereby effective I mean available, affordable, as good and as safe).

None.

Anyone tells you otherwise, they are either lying, not smart, or trying to drum up money for the BATTERY BREAKTHROUGH VENTURE!

If there is something out there, it is either not known, and thus sure as shit aint gonna show up in the pages of PC World, or is known by a tiny select few, such as Larry Page and Tim Cook.

And neither of them are going to share that information while they launch a bidding war for their smartphone battery salvation.

"Journalists" won't stop trying, of course. Even if they're just parroting some press release:

Although iPhone 4S battery drain was a real problem, it also brought up the need for a smartphone battery breakthrough--something so significant that you'll never have to worry about getting through the day on a single charge, even if the battery's not behaving properly.

The good news is that a true breakthrough is on the way, and promises week-long battery life and 15-minute recharge times. The bad news is that this technology is still three to five years away from the market.

Researchers at Northwestern University worked with the same lithium-ion batteries found in today's smartphones. But by layering clusters of silicon in between the graphene sheets that make up one side of the battery--known as the anode--the researchers were able to pack in a lot more lithium.

Scientists have already tried using silicon as a replacement for carbon-based graphene sheets but, in previous approaches, it expanded and contracted too dramatically, causing fragmentation that reduced capacity. Apparently the sandwiching of silicon between graphene solves that problem.

Wake me up in 3-5 years.

TechCrunch kinda sorta breaks a story:
[emphasis mine]

I keep coming back to a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a veteran Silicon Valley CEO who knew Jobs. This was just after Jobs had resigned as CEO of Apple. We got to talking about why Apple is so well-positioned in the post-PC era, and this executive zeroed in on something you don’t hear too often. “Steve Jobs told me he has 1,000 engineers working on chips,” he said. “Getting low power and smaller is the key to everything.”

The number was startling when I first heard it. I knew that Apple started building its own chip design team in 2009, but figured it had to be a few hundred people at most, not 5 percent of Apple’s non-retail workforce. (Apple employs more than 50,000 people worldwide, 30,000 of them in its retail stores). Apple started designing its own chips because Intel and AMD were still stuck in the PC era. Apple needs chips that are powerful enough, but also very low power.

Battery life is one of the most important features of a mobile device. Apple’s latest A5 processor, which first appeared in the iPad 2, will now power the iPhone 4S as well. Not only is the A5 twice as fast as the A4 in the current iPhone 4, but it slightly improves the battery life with 8 hours of talk time (versus 7 hours).

Not only are Apple’s processors extremely power efficient, but Apple is also removing the hard drives from its products and replacing them with flash memory chips. It’s not just iPhones and iPads, the MacBook Air’s storage is also flash. All of Apple’s products are moving in this direction. When you combine these two fundamental changes at the silicon level, “form factor no longer becomes an issue,” explained the Silicon Valley CEO.

You probably have a few initial thoughts, such as:

• Is this third-party anonymous news complete bullshit? Partial bullshit? Spot on? Well, we don't know. And "working on" could mean a lot of things, even inside Apple. If I approve gaming apps and am given an iPhone 5beta to test them on, am I "working on" the whole chip effort?
• Why would TechCrunch's editor sit on this? No idea. My guess is, he probably went to "journalism" school and is confounded by too many datapoints.
• Fucking cool! High-power, low-power-sucking chips and flash memory and we are running into the post-PC world! I've written many times here that, for Apple, "it's all about the screens". Because, everything else -- everything else -- is fading into the background. Even memory, hard drive and battery.

Now for the bad news...

This may mean what I've long feared. We remain bound by the laws of physics. Those fuckers. Fuel cells, hydrogen powered batteries, alternative power; all that shit that VCs have been spending millions on, maybe billions, hasn't done shit. I can pretty much guarantee you that Apple may or may not have 1,000 people working on chips but they do *not* have 1,000 working on batteries.

No, it's not the end of the world, but it's the equivalent of flying the most badass helicopter there is -- because we can't figure out jet propulsion or can't build a adequate jet engine. It's a significant limitation on our evolution.

Anything else?

Perhaps. Perhaps this reveals the ultimate triumph of the Apple Way? Perhaps this reveals why Microsoft struggles so badly to move into the future. Perhaps this reveals why Google, despite server farms around the world, spent much of its future on a mid-sized US-based electronics company with probably a greater past than future.

You can't build the software without knowing the hardware. Not if you want it insanely great. And in today's world, when we can have insanely great, we do not settle. 

Hardware is hard. It's messy, complicated. Almost no one does it well. Almost no one makes money on the hardware. Those that once did, now struggle, such as Dell, or exit the business, such as HP. 

Building their castles in the clouds. 

If Apple has 1,000 persons working, fully or partly, on chips, odds are terrific that no one will be able to make better software that runs on those chips. Odds are that no one will be able to build software that runs better on *any* chips. Because they simply don't have that skill set. No matter how smart, the work matters, the work teaches.

Licensing may offer scale but doesn't not offer expertise, or perfection. 

Some may call Apple's way 'closed' and not like it. They will suggest it is controlling. Mistakenly view it as an obsessive need to 'own the stack'. They miss that it ensures a level of expertise and optimization that no one else can match. But that customers can instantly sense. 

The real killer app for smartphones? Battery life. Cheap, accessible, long-lasting energy. More good news on this front, this time from University of Michigan:

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A new "subconscious mode" for smartphones and other WiFi-enabled mobile devices could extend battery life by as much as 54 percent for users on the busiest networks. The approach is still in the proof-of-concept stage and is not yet commercially available.

Even when smartphones are in power-saving modes and not actively sending or receiving messages, they are still on alert for incoming information and they're searching for a clear communication channel. The researchers have found that this kind of energy-taxing "idle listening" is occurring during a large portion of the time phones spend in power-saving mode—as much as 80 percent on busy networks. Their new approach could make smartphones perform this idle listening more efficiently. It's called E-MiLi, which stands for Energy-Minimizing Idle Listening. "My phone isn't sending or receiving anything right now," Shin said, lifting his power-skinned iPhone, "but it's listening to see if data is coming in so I can receive it right away. This idle listening often consumes as much power as actively sending and receiving messages all day."

Here's how E-MiLi works: It slows down the WiFi card's clock by up to 1/16 its normal frequency, but jolts it back to full speed when the phone notices information coming in. It's well known that you can slow a device's clock to save energy. The hard part, Shin said, was getting the phone to recognize an incoming message while it was in this slower mode. "We came up with a clever idea," Shin said. "Usually, messages come with a header, and we thought the phone could be enabled to detect this, as you can recognize that someone is calling your name even if you're 90 percent asleep."
When used with power-saving mode, the researchers found that E-MiLi is capable of reducing energy consumption by around 44 percent for 92 percent of mobile devices in real-world wireless networks.

In order for E-MiLi use to become widespread, WiFi chipset manufacturers would have to adopt these firmware modifications and then companies that make smartphones and computers would have to incorporate the new chips into their products. Shin points out that E-MiLi is compatible with today's models, so messages sent with future devices that use E-MiLi's encoding would still be received as usual on smartphones without E-MiLi.

TreeHugger gives us the good news on an alternative power source:

Add a tiny hydrogen fuel cell and a tablespoon of water to the PowerTrekk and it will charge your smart phone, digital camera, GPS, and/or virtually any other gizmo that takes juice via a USB cable. Unlike solar chargers, the lightweight (240 grams or 8.5 oz) PowerTrekk is not reliant on hours spent lazing about in the sun, it's ready to go as soon as you turn it on. The only by-product said to be emitted is water vapour. The actual PowerPukk fuel cell is itself said to be considered safe enough to be allowed onboard as part of your aircraft cabin baggage.

PowerTrekk is targeted at three applications. 1. outdoor enthusiasts and 2. business people in remote locations away from powerpoint recharge facilities. And 3. emergency situations when normal electrical power is shut down.

BREAKING NEWS FROM GIZMODO:

Apple has been granted its first patent related to Liquidmetal, that futuristic metal with awesome plastic qualities. But the patent says that Apple won't be using Liquidmetal in iPhone and iPad casing, but rather as an internal component for fuel cells. Miniature fuel cells can last a helluva long time (30 days without recharging on a phone) but no one has quite figured out how to effectively build 'em. And the company that does, will probably end up with the longest lasting battery on the market.

But you already knew that iPhone 5 would have a "significantly improved battery." Because last month, it was my #1 projected new feature for iPhone 5. And *2 months ago* I told you that iPhone 5 would have significantly improved battery life because Apple was *already focusing its marketing* on the benefits of longer-lasting batteries.

What kind of budget do they have over there at Gizmodo? I bet it sure buys a lot of sushi. And crap sources.

I've written here too many times to count that the final hurdle to plaent-wide smartphone liberation is...the mother f-ing battery. I've looked into this. Physics, if we can believe this black science, pretty much says incremental improvements are all we can get. Actually, it's more like chemistry, considering we use lithium-ion and nickel-cadmium, but still. Battery limitations limit smartphones which limit users.

Do I have anything new to say about this? Any hope? No, not really. This is mostly for me. Because I often feel as I type these posts out on my laptop or iPhone and they get shot into a deep, dark distortable ether. So, I felt a warm fuzzy when an article in GigaOm talked about smartphone batteries -- and the fact that we shouldn't get our hopes up.

Here's the article.

If you want to find a Moore’s Law-type improvement for batteries, “you’ve got to go to an asteroid and come back with some new materials.” Battery improvements these days are about optimization and incremental improvements, and we need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid and be realistic about pricing, said Beach.

Below is my comment. And, yes, I actually expect to have a George Jetson flying car *before* I get a hydrogen fuel cell for my smartphone or before there's wireless power deliver over WiFi (for most of us).

Really appreciate this article, Katie. On my site I talk almost exclusively about smartphones and despite drinking that kool-aid I’ve long maintained that battery is the achilles heel. Li-on and Ni-cad won’t liberate us. Maybe someone will invent workable, affordable wireless power over Wifi. Or, we can go all in with hydrogen fuel cells with mini hydrogen refill bars at every coffee shop or place that has Wifi. Fortunately, Moore’s Law exists elsewhere. And as other hardware gets better, smaller, faster, less power-draining, we can just add bigger batteries. It’s something…

Here's what my smartphone needs. Probably yours, too.

• Very lightweight
• Highly functional
• Always-on
• Affordable

For this to happen, battery technology has to improve. Batteries must be lighter, more powerful, last far longer. Unfortunately, we're pretty much near the peak of battery capability. Hydrogen power, fuel cells and lab experiments haven't helped much. But given that there's already 5 billion mobile communications devices out there, and soon over 1 billion smartpohnes, there's real money for the person or university or company that can figure out how to seemingly defy the laws of physics.

Amprius, affiliated with Stanford, has its eyes on the prize.

Battery startup Amprius says it has developed batteries capable of storing twice as much energy as anything on the market today, thanks to nanostructured silicon electrodes. The company says it is partnering with several as-yet unnamed major consumer electronics manufacturers to bring the batteries to market by early 2012. The batteries will allow portable electronics to run 40 percent longer without a recharge.

The worst thing about your iPhone or Nokia or Blackberry? Okay, besides the cost and carrier?

Battery life.

Near as I can tell, our most advanced personal technologies still rely on 19th century notions of chemistry and physics. And there's nothing magical and revolutionary about that.

Hydrogen doesn't work. Fuel cells haven't worked. Can we possibly extract more life out of a lithium-ion or ni-cad battery? Probably not much more. Beyond this, no one cares more about the personal smartphone experience than Apple. So I continue to believe they will acquire or financially support innovative battery technology. Maybe they should consider this dark silicon stuff: