Smartphone battery. The chain that binds us.

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…