Don't forget performance. We could surely have that 14-16 hours if we stuck with 2011 CPU and GPU performance and the non-Retina displays, but we're still at a point where increasing the performance is highly beneficial to the consumer experience. At some point the performance and thinness thresholds will allow for longer battery life to the point we don't really consider the time. I know I'd go weeks without charging my iPad and I can go days without charging my iPhone, although I prefer not to on the latter.
I completely agree about performance. That's why I buy a new iPad every year (except once). But battery performance increases only about 5% a year. That's not enough.
I recently finished reading a book about the invention of the lithium battery. It continues until the book was written late 2012 or early 2013. It's called The Powerhouse by Steve !evine. I bought it from iBooks. This is a great read. Especially if you want to understand why things aren't better. A123, the company that Apple hired these people from is in the book.
I personally would not want to go back to the weight of the iPad 3, versus the Air 2. The new ones are fantastically light.
yup. i still have my ipad 1 and wake it up from time to time -- it's heavy. that the Air 2 has the same great battery but is what, at least half the size? is amazing. not sure how people dont get that.
I wonder about that. While some people say that, they keep buying devices that are thinner and thinner, even where it makes no sense.
Do we really need Tvs that are .25" thick? Do cars have to so be low to the ground? Manufacturers seem to be telling us that they do, but we're buying into it too.
yeah, super thin TVs do make sense -- they are much less distracting in the home than thicker sets. YMMV, but if you have an exposed screen then thick TVs are just bulky and nasty. the thinner the screen the more it can blend into its surroundings.
This isn't impossible. You have to wonder why so many are being hired, maybe Apple has a line on a next gen technology that they intend to introduce. There certainly has been enough research going one that appear to be implementable. The question would be which way does Apple go here.
Thing is, the CPU & radios, etc are so efficient it's really all about the power the screen (specifically backlight) uses. LEDs are getting brighter per watt, but when you're already converting virtually all of the energy put into the LEDs into light, there's not really anywhere left to go. That's why Apple's changed around their LCD transistors so they to squeeze more light through the LCD panel itself. OLED is really the next level in display efficiency, but I don't see Apple sacrificing their excellent colour rendition for OLED's rather poor output. But you never know, Apple has many tricks up its many sleeves, I don't doubt that they have an OLED research team.
yeah, super thin TVs do make sense -- they are much less distracting in the home than thicker sets. YMMV, but if you have an exposed screen then thick TVs are just bulky and nasty. the thinner the screen the more it can blend into its surroundings.
You have me laughing to myself because I can remember the days when it too two guys to move a 25" TV. With all the power supplies, tubes and other goodies those TV's where heavy. Today the TV's are deceptively light. I can't wait for the day when TV's are applied to wall like wall paper.
Thing is, the CPU & radios, etc are so efficient it's really all about the power the screen (specifically backlight) uses.
Well no, the CPU can pull a significant amount of power. I'm not sure for example what the A8X is rated at but last I knew the CPU's could pull 2 watts or more of power when loaded. On the other hand I don't want to dismiss your statements completely because the displays can drain the batteries really fast if they are cranked up significantly. Thankfully that power draw is variable.
The interesting thing here is if my iPad is running hot the first thing I check is the screen brightness setting. There is no doubt that having the brightness turned up more than needed wastes power but load the processor down too much and you can still heat up an iPad (3) in my case pretty good. Sadly it seems like lately a hot running processor means an app will crash shortly.
LEDs are getting brighter per watt, but when you're already converting virtually all of the energy put into the LEDs into light, there's not really anywhere left to go.
They have a ways to go yet. Even a few percentage points is a big deal in a battery powered device. The other reality here is that distribution of that light in a thin device is a challenge. In a nut shell it is the sum total of many inefficiencies that drive battery usage in the display
That's why Apple's changed around their LCD transistors so they to squeeze more light through the LCD panel itself.
Neat the way they did that.
OLED is really the next level in display efficiency, but I don't see Apple sacrificing their excellent colour rendition for OLED's rather poor output.
We will have to see how iWatch goes over. In general I haven't liked the OLED screens I've seen to date. Further OLED screens are efficient when most to the screen is off. From what I've seen of Apples demos it looks like a significant design them for Apple Watch.
But you never know, Apple has many tricks up its many sleeves, I don't doubt that they have an OLED research team.
That is a certainly as they have hired many researchers in that field.
In any event my point with batteries is you have to wonder if Apple is about to adopt new battery tech due to all of these hires. I really want to see this happen myself. I say that sitting here shocked yet again how long my new MBP runs on battery power. It is new so I've been running software installations, brew installs and updating iTunes all the while surfing the net. The machine ran 4 hours before I remembered that I didn't plug into power. I still had more that 50% battery capacity, that is impressive considering my old MBP could hardly run itself on a battery.
In any event I imagine a battery half as thick as todays in an iPad Air 4. The PCB might end up being the thickest part of the device.
Well no, the CPU can pull a significant amount of power. I'm not sure for example what the A8X is rated at but last I knew the CPU's could pull 2 watts or more of power when loaded. On the other hand I don't want to dismiss your statements completely because the displays can drain the batteries really fast if they are cranked up significantly. Thankfully that power draw is variable.
Sorry I was really referencing the new MB, with its 5w CPU. I'm not sure what the power consumption of the display is, but it is quite a big percentage when talking about the new MB and the iPads.
The interesting thing here is if my iPad is running hot the first thing I check is the screen brightness setting. There is no doubt that having the brightness turned up more than needed wastes power but load the processor down too much and you can still heat up an iPad (3) in my case pretty good. Sadly it seems like lately a hot running processor means an app will crash shortly.
They have a ways to go yet. Even a few percentage points is a big deal in a battery powered device. The other reality here is that distribution of that light in a thin device is a challenge. In a nut shell it is the sum total of many inefficiencies that drive battery usage in the display.
A few percentage points isn't really much when the LEDs are already 90% efficient. I'd like to measure the power usage of the iPad display, I've got an ageing iPad 2 that might be a backlight donor... I read on the Beeb a few years ago that someone had invented an LED that actually output more light energy than electrical energy input, though I was rather skeptical...
We will have to see how iWatch goes over. In general I haven't liked the OLED screens I've seen to date. Further OLED screens are efficient when most to the screen is off. From what I've seen of Apples demos it looks like a significant design them for Apple Watch.
Yeah perhaps Apple's OLED is better, or its just not noticeable on a watch. As you point out the OLED screens don't use any power for black areas, which is a fair bit of power saving. Especially with a dark interface like the Watch.
In any event my point with batteries is you have to wonder if Apple is about to adopt new battery tech due to all of these hires. I really want to see this happen myself. I say that sitting here shocked yet again how long my new MBP runs on battery power. It is new so I've been running software installations, brew installs and updating iTunes all the while surfing the net. The machine ran 4 hours before I remembered that I didn't plug into power. I still had more that 50% battery capacity, that is impressive considering my old MBP could hardly run itself on a battery.
Yeah I do wonder what Apple's up to with the battery hires. I don't think they're capable of coming up with a totally new battery tech, since that takes years (I know they've had years, but still) and it's really an area of chemistry rather than engineering, which is Apple's forte. They've had incremental improvements with the 10 hour battery thing, but that's really again engineering (closely monitoring each cell rather than the battery overall) than chemistry. The battery industry hasn't really had any breakthroughs since Li-Ion, and there aren't really any on anyone's roadmap either.
In any event I imagine a battery half as thick as todays in an iPad Air 4. The PCB might end up being the thickest part of the device.
That would be nice, but I think the screen and battery make up around 60% of the thickness at the mo.
Apple is attempting to differentiate their portable devices and better battery life would be quite important. Perhaps not so much with the iPad or iPhone, but the iWatch getting less than 24 hours on a charge is problematic. Taking the watch off of my wrist for a recharge is a problem. I don't think about my watch right now. I just look at it when I want the time. The iWatch changes a all of that. If I am in an airport and my flight gets delayed I may have to plug the device in. I would rather not have to do so.
Squeezing greater levels of CPU performance drawing less power is beginning to hit a wall. There really isn't much of a ceiling left. But when I read of atmel controllers allowing for a battery life of 10 years, perhaps the ceiling is higher than I had originally imagined.
However, it would seem to me that battery technology still has some legs. Even more than power output and density, it would seem that getting better cycle life would be the priority, especially for a device like a high end watch which won't be replaced every few years or even in a lifetime.
As far as electric cars are concerned, I wouldn't hold my breath. Building batteries for hundreds of millions of portable devices is one thing. Building batteries for something as large as automobiles is an entirely different matter. There simply isn't enough lithium, nickel, etc. to do that.
Perhaps a sodium based battery would allow such. However, hydrogen is the most ideal fuel source for an automobile. Hence, I don't believe Apple is going to mass produce battery powered vehicles. Carbon nanotubes as the catalyst using hydrogen to generate electricity to power a vehicle is the future of automobile manufacturing. Hydrogen is far, far, far more plentiful than lithium and doesn't have to be mined.
And I forgot to mention that lithium air batteries have a theoretical energy density of 10 times current li ion technology. Hence there is still huge potential in battery technology. So an iPad could theoretically last 100 hours and the iWatch for 140 hours. Again it's based on the use of carbon nanotube catalysts. The following link has more information.
If Apple can bring this technology to fruition, they will own the entire mobile and portable market. Android, Windows mobile, Tizen and the rest of them will be dead in the water.
And if Apple decides to converge their entire product line on the A series CPUs, Intel is gone too.
Apple is in a commanding position. Far more than Google and Microsoft. If they develop this, it will be pushing the thermonuclear button on Google. Only Apple will be the ones with the nukes with Google shooting back using conventional bullets.
Would an utterly dominant Apple be a good thing? I don't know, but we shall see. They are positioning themselves for a complete takeover of the entire market as I don't see anyone else with Apple's resources or talent taking on this kind of battery development project.
If Intel and Microsoft had wanted to stay relevant, they should have done this several years ago. I am afraid that it's now too late to take on Apple in this endeavor.
And I forgot to mention that lithium air batteries have a theoretical energy density of 10 times current li ion technology. Hence there is still huge potential in battery technology. So an iPad could theoretically last 100 hours and the iWatch for 140 hours. Again it's based on the use of carbon nanotube catalysts. The following link has more information.
If Apple can bring this technology to fruition, they will own the entire mobile and portable market. Android, Windows mobile, Tizen and the rest of them will be dead in the water.
And if Apple decides to converge their entire product line on the A series CPUs, Intel is gone too.
Apple is in a commanding position. Far more than Google and Microsoft. If they develop this, it will be pushing the thermonuclear button on Google. Only Apple will be the ones with the nukes with Google shooting back using conventional bullets.
Would an utterly dominant Apple be a good thing? I don't know, but we shall see. They are positioning themselves for a complete takeover of the entire market as I don't see anyone else with Apple's resources or talent taking on this kind of battery development project.
If Intel and Microsoft had wanted to stay relevant, they should have done this several years ago. I am afraid that it's now too late to take on Apple in this endeavor.
There are a number of potential battery technologies out there. But none of them have ever come to market, because what works in the lab (when the companies aren't fraudulently stating that they can do what they cannot, such as Envia), usually doesn't work in production.
They can't even get lithium air batteries to work properly in the lab.
I really recommend people to get the book I mentioned earlier, it's an eye opener. Splurge!
There are a number of potential battery technologies out there. But none of them have ever come to market, because what works in the lab (when the companies aren't fraudulently stating that they can do what they cannot, such as Envia), usually doesn't work in production.
They can't even get lithium air batteries to work properly in the lab.
I really recommend people to get the book I mentioned earlier, it's an eye opener. Splurge!
While true to an extent, all of today's advanced battery technology was developed in a lab somewhere. Look at how far the lowly AA battery has come over the years, there was a time when such batteries where considered useless. Now we wonder why anybody would even want to by a device with D cells.
The same thing has happened with the various Lithiium technologies. These batteries could barley compete with NiCads and then all of a sudden pulled well ahead of NiCads eventually completely displacing NiCads for consumer devices.
One can't dismiss the fraud out there, but on the otherhand so much money is going into battery research right now that a new generation is bound to come out soon.
Lithium air batteries do have technical challenges. But they will be solved. Much like LG is bringing out large screen OLED televisions to market and the only manufacturer doing so at this time.
Apple has the financial ability and putting the technical resources into place to bring this technology to market. Discounting them will be a huge mistake. If Apple perfects this, no one else will be able to compete.
Granted, the thin designs will require modifications to allow enough air flow so the battery functions properly, but Apple's designers will no doubt do it elegantly.
Perhaps a history of Thomas Edison's invention of the light bulb would be in order. It took a lot of failures before he finally produced a functional light bulb. But he did.
Lithium air technology is achievable. Such a battery would absolutely revolutionize the mobile electronics industry. Just like the light bulb revolutionized its time. And before Edison invented the bulb? There were no previous working prototypes either.
Just a simple search actually shows that someone actually developed a working potassium air battery. They have substituted lithium for the potassium. None of the technical details were revealed. But the promise of lithium air technology seems like it is finally coming to fruition. See:
I quite agree. The lightness of my iPad Air 2 is superb and worth a sacrifice of battery life. But it would be nice to see a focus now on battery life. I know I'm being unrealistic with 24 hours, but it would be good to see a distinct leap—perhaps 15 hours.
I really have an issue grasping how people could use an iPad for 15 hours in a day. That is real use. I'm still rocking an iPad 3 and frankly even now it has plenty of battery life. Beyond that I keep a charger in the auto so any trip I go on, long or short, is a top up opportunity for the iPad, often the iPhone too. A charger at work means idle time is top up time. Even on an off day when I spend too much time with the iPad I still have to get up and leave before the battery goes dead.
In a nut shell, why would anyone want to get more than a full days use out of an iPAds battery? What good does it do for you.
Here is the thing that for me is rather apparent, IPad needs increased performance more, far more actually, than it needs increased run times on battery. I've played around with the Air's and frankly the performance delta just isn't enough to get me to upgrade. I'm really hoping that Apple goes all out for high performance with the 14 nm chips and more so im hoping that 14nm chips actually ship this year. I'd much rather see 2.6 GHz worth of performance out of this falls device rather than another hours worth of battery life.
Lithium air batteries do have technical challenges. But they will be solved. Much like LG is bringing out large screen OLED televisions to market and the only manufacturer doing so at this time.
One also has to realize that there is also lots of research going into battery technologies that have nothing to do with lithium processes. There are a number of possibilities, some may never leave the labs but with so much research going on the potential for a breakthrough is extremely high.
Apple has the financial ability and putting the technical resources into place to bring this technology to market. Discounting them will be a huge mistake. If Apple perfects this, no one else will be able to compete.
Don't dismiss the ability of the competition here. The mobile industry is financing a great deal of battery research and frankly research into super caps.
Granted, the thin designs will require modifications to allow enough air flow so the battery functions properly, but Apple's designers will no doubt do it elegantly.
Perhaps a history of Thomas Edison's invention of the light bulb would be in order. It took a lot of failures before he finally produced a functional light bulb. But he did.
For a more contemporary example look at how far LEDs have come. I can remember when the best examples could barely be seen as panel indicator lights in a bright room. Now we light rooms with LEDs.
Lithium air technology is achievable. Such a battery would absolutely revolutionize the mobile electronics industry. Just like the light bulb revolutionized its time. And before Edison invented the bulb? There were no previous working prototypes either.
Achievable possible, just don't ignore every other possibility.
Lithium oxygen batteries have the highest potential energy density of any type of battery. Why wouldn't the focus be primarily on that technology? Sodium air and potassium air batteries beat lithium ion as far as energy density is concerned also. There are other battery technologies that beat li ion, but compared with the energy density of a lithium air battery, nothing else simply compares. I admit that discharge current capacity may be limited, so I don't ever expect these batteries to displace lead acid for starting cars. But for electric vehicles and portable electronics this technology would be ideal.
Apple's S series processor initiative will require a high performance energy source. While an iPad may not need more than 15 hours of battery life, I can absolutely guarantee I could definitely use more in an iPhone. And the watch is a non-starter in my book. In addition a high performance energy source would allow for design compromises in the A series processor line that would give a 15 hour life with much higher performance. The A8X serves me now as a laptop replacement. Not certain I would want to use a device that heats up in my hands or on my lap. A 2 - 3 watt TDP for a processor seems ideal. And if I don't have to charge up for several days, even better.
When a rechargeable lithium air power source becomes available, there will be consumer electronics revolution. There isn't anything else comparable for energy storage.
Lithium oxygen batteries have the highest potential energy density of any type of battery. Why wouldn't the focus be primarily on that technology? Sodium air and potassium air batteries beat lithium ion as far as energy density is concerned also. There are other battery technologies that beat li ion, but compared with the energy density of a lithium air battery, nothing else simply compares. I admit that discharge current capacity may be limited, so I don't ever expect these batteries to displace lead acid for starting cars. But for electric vehicles and portable electronics this technology would be ideal.
That may be true but people shouldn't dismiss alternatives as we don't know if lithium air will over come all of the problems it has a the moment. Aluminum-ion batteries and variant there of have a lot of potential. Besides we have not yet gotten fully away from the problem of thermal runaway with lithium technologies. For a watch safety has to be an important part of the puzzle.
Apple's S series processor initiative will require a high performance energy source. While an iPad may not need more than 15 hours of battery life, I can absolutely guarantee I could definitely use more in an iPhone.
No doubt there.
And the watch is a non-starter in my book. In addition a high performance energy source would allow for design compromises in the A series processor line that would give a 15 hour life with much higher performance. The A8X serves me now as a laptop replacement. Not certain I would want to use a device that heats up in my hands or on my lap. A 2 - 3 watt TDP for a processor seems ideal. And if I don't have to charge up for several days, even better.
When a rechargeable lithium air power source becomes available, there will be consumer electronics revolution. There isn't anything else comparable for energy storage.
Maybe! My point is there are many technologies competing for those future consumer devices. Even a 50% increase in density would justify a new technology in an iPhone.
A 50% capacity increase would be nice. I don't want to discount that. But if Apple could develop a working Li-oxygen battery, holds the patent and releases the energy source only for their own products, it would be game over for much of the rest of the consumer electronics industry. The only place conventional batteries could compete would be in areas where air or oxygen were limited.
Lithium is the lightest of all metals and an avid electron donor. Helium is totally inert and hydrogen is lighter, but a gas at room temperature. It can be adsorbed into metals like platinum at a weight penalty. On the oxidizing side, additional gains are theoretically possible by increasing the density of packing the Manganese dioxide. However, oxygen in the air would be ideal as the battery would not have to carry the weight of the oxygen attached to another element.
It would make the battery interesting however, as the battery would get heavier as it discharges as the oxygen goes from a gas to a solid oxide. Still, it's a very promising technology. Though there are hurdles to overcome, once a working model is developed, it will change the industry.
Comments
I completely agree about performance. That's why I buy a new iPad every year (except once). But battery performance increases only about 5% a year. That's not enough.
I recently finished reading a book about the invention of the lithium battery. It continues until the book was written late 2012 or early 2013. It's called The Powerhouse by Steve !evine. I bought it from iBooks. This is a great read. Especially if you want to understand why things aren't better. A123, the company that Apple hired these people from is in the book.
I personally would not want to go back to the weight of the iPad 3, versus the Air 2. The new ones are fantastically light.
yup. i still have my ipad 1 and wake it up from time to time -- it's heavy. that the Air 2 has the same great battery but is what, at least half the size? is amazing. not sure how people dont get that.
I wonder about that. While some people say that, they keep buying devices that are thinner and thinner, even where it makes no sense.
Do we really need Tvs that are .25" thick? Do cars have to so be low to the ground? Manufacturers seem to be telling us that they do, but we're buying into it too.
yeah, super thin TVs do make sense -- they are much less distracting in the home than thicker sets. YMMV, but if you have an exposed screen then thick TVs are just bulky and nasty. the thinner the screen the more it can blend into its surroundings.
Thing is, the CPU & radios, etc are so efficient it's really all about the power the screen (specifically backlight) uses. LEDs are getting brighter per watt, but when you're already converting virtually all of the energy put into the LEDs into light, there's not really anywhere left to go. That's why Apple's changed around their LCD transistors so they to squeeze more light through the LCD panel itself. OLED is really the next level in display efficiency, but I don't see Apple sacrificing their excellent colour rendition for OLED's rather poor output. But you never know, Apple has many tricks up its many sleeves, I don't doubt that they have an OLED research team.
You have me laughing to myself because I can remember the days when it too two guys to move a 25" TV. With all the power supplies, tubes and other goodies those TV's where heavy. Today the TV's are deceptively light. I can't wait for the day when TV's are applied to wall like wall paper.
The interesting thing here is if my iPad is running hot the first thing I check is the screen brightness setting. There is no doubt that having the brightness turned up more than needed wastes power but load the processor down too much and you can still heat up an iPad (3) in my case pretty good. Sadly it seems like lately a hot running processor means an app will crash shortly. They have a ways to go yet. Even a few percentage points is a big deal in a battery powered device. The other reality here is that distribution of that light in a thin device is a challenge. In a nut shell it is the sum total of many inefficiencies that drive battery usage in the display Neat the way they did that. We will have to see how iWatch goes over. In general I haven't liked the OLED screens I've seen to date. Further OLED screens are efficient when most to the screen is off. From what I've seen of Apples demos it looks like a significant design them for Apple Watch.
That is a certainly as they have hired many researchers in that field.
In any event my point with batteries is you have to wonder if Apple is about to adopt new battery tech due to all of these hires. I really want to see this happen myself. I say that sitting here shocked yet again how long my new MBP runs on battery power. It is new so I've been running software installations, brew installs and updating iTunes all the while surfing the net. The machine ran 4 hours before I remembered that I didn't plug into power. I still had more that 50% battery capacity, that is impressive considering my old MBP could hardly run itself on a battery.
In any event I imagine a battery half as thick as todays in an iPad Air 4. The PCB might end up being the thickest part of the device.
Sorry I was really referencing the new MB, with its 5w CPU. I'm not sure what the power consumption of the display is, but it is quite a big percentage when talking about the new MB and the iPads.
A few percentage points isn't really much when the LEDs are already 90% efficient. I'd like to measure the power usage of the iPad display, I've got an ageing iPad 2 that might be a backlight donor... I read on the Beeb a few years ago that someone had invented an LED that actually output more light energy than electrical energy input, though I was rather skeptical...
Yeah perhaps Apple's OLED is better, or its just not noticeable on a watch. As you point out the OLED screens don't use any power for black areas, which is a fair bit of power saving. Especially with a dark interface like the Watch.
Yeah I do wonder what Apple's up to with the battery hires. I don't think they're capable of coming up with a totally new battery tech, since that takes years (I know they've had years, but still) and it's really an area of chemistry rather than engineering, which is Apple's forte. They've had incremental improvements with the 10 hour battery thing, but that's really again engineering (closely monitoring each cell rather than the battery overall) than chemistry. The battery industry hasn't really had any breakthroughs since Li-Ion, and there aren't really any on anyone's roadmap either.
That would be nice, but I think the screen and battery make up around 60% of the thickness at the mo.
Squeezing greater levels of CPU performance drawing less power is beginning to hit a wall. There really isn't much of a ceiling left. But when I read of atmel controllers allowing for a battery life of 10 years, perhaps the ceiling is higher than I had originally imagined.
However, it would seem to me that battery technology still has some legs. Even more than power output and density, it would seem that getting better cycle life would be the priority, especially for a device like a high end watch which won't be replaced every few years or even in a lifetime.
As far as electric cars are concerned, I wouldn't hold my breath. Building batteries for hundreds of millions of portable devices is one thing. Building batteries for something as large as automobiles is an entirely different matter. There simply isn't enough lithium, nickel, etc. to do that.
Perhaps a sodium based battery would allow such. However, hydrogen is the most ideal fuel source for an automobile. Hence, I don't believe Apple is going to mass produce battery powered vehicles. Carbon nanotubes as the catalyst using hydrogen to generate electricity to power a vehicle is the future of automobile manufacturing. Hydrogen is far, far, far more plentiful than lithium and doesn't have to be mined.
http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/carbon-nanotubes-go-back-inside-fuel-cells
If Apple can bring this technology to fruition, they will own the entire mobile and portable market. Android, Windows mobile, Tizen and the rest of them will be dead in the water.
And if Apple decides to converge their entire product line on the A series CPUs, Intel is gone too.
Apple is in a commanding position. Far more than Google and Microsoft. If they develop this, it will be pushing the thermonuclear button on Google. Only Apple will be the ones with the nukes with Google shooting back using conventional bullets.
Would an utterly dominant Apple be a good thing? I don't know, but we shall see. They are positioning themselves for a complete takeover of the entire market as I don't see anyone else with Apple's resources or talent taking on this kind of battery development project.
If Intel and Microsoft had wanted to stay relevant, they should have done this several years ago. I am afraid that it's now too late to take on Apple in this endeavor.
There are a number of potential battery technologies out there. But none of them have ever come to market, because what works in the lab (when the companies aren't fraudulently stating that they can do what they cannot, such as Envia), usually doesn't work in production.
They can't even get lithium air batteries to work properly in the lab.
I really recommend people to get the book I mentioned earlier, it's an eye opener. Splurge!
While true to an extent, all of today's advanced battery technology was developed in a lab somewhere. Look at how far the lowly AA battery has come over the years, there was a time when such batteries where considered useless. Now we wonder why anybody would even want to by a device with D cells.
The same thing has happened with the various Lithiium technologies. These batteries could barley compete with NiCads and then all of a sudden pulled well ahead of NiCads eventually completely displacing NiCads for consumer devices.
One can't dismiss the fraud out there, but on the otherhand so much money is going into battery research right now that a new generation is bound to come out soon.
Apple has the financial ability and putting the technical resources into place to bring this technology to market. Discounting them will be a huge mistake. If Apple perfects this, no one else will be able to compete.
Granted, the thin designs will require modifications to allow enough air flow so the battery functions properly, but Apple's designers will no doubt do it elegantly.
Perhaps a history of Thomas Edison's invention of the light bulb would be in order. It took a lot of failures before he finally produced a functional light bulb. But he did.
Lithium air technology is achievable. Such a battery would absolutely revolutionize the mobile electronics industry. Just like the light bulb revolutionized its time. And before Edison invented the bulb? There were no previous working prototypes either.
http://singularityhub.com/2014/10/28/new-solar-cell-doubles-as-battery-to-store-the-energy-it-creates/
I really have an issue grasping how people could use an iPad for 15 hours in a day. That is real use. I'm still rocking an iPad 3 and frankly even now it has plenty of battery life. Beyond that I keep a charger in the auto so any trip I go on, long or short, is a top up opportunity for the iPad, often the iPhone too. A charger at work means idle time is top up time. Even on an off day when I spend too much time with the iPad I still have to get up and leave before the battery goes dead.
In a nut shell, why would anyone want to get more than a full days use out of an iPAds battery? What good does it do for you.
Here is the thing that for me is rather apparent, IPad needs increased performance more, far more actually, than it needs increased run times on battery. I've played around with the Air's and frankly the performance delta just isn't enough to get me to upgrade. I'm really hoping that Apple goes all out for high performance with the 14 nm chips and more so im hoping that 14nm chips actually ship this year. I'd much rather see 2.6 GHz worth of performance out of this falls device rather than another hours worth of battery life.
Achievable possible, just don't ignore every other possibility.
Apple's S series processor initiative will require a high performance energy source. While an iPad may not need more than 15 hours of battery life, I can absolutely guarantee I could definitely use more in an iPhone. And the watch is a non-starter in my book. In addition a high performance energy source would allow for design compromises in the A series processor line that would give a 15 hour life with much higher performance. The A8X serves me now as a laptop replacement. Not certain I would want to use a device that heats up in my hands or on my lap. A 2 - 3 watt TDP for a processor seems ideal. And if I don't have to charge up for several days, even better.
When a rechargeable lithium air power source becomes available, there will be consumer electronics revolution. There isn't anything else comparable for energy storage.
Maybe! My point is there are many technologies competing for those future consumer devices. Even a 50% increase in density would justify a new technology in an iPhone.
Lithium is the lightest of all metals and an avid electron donor. Helium is totally inert and hydrogen is lighter, but a gas at room temperature. It can be adsorbed into metals like platinum at a weight penalty. On the oxidizing side, additional gains are theoretically possible by increasing the density of packing the Manganese dioxide. However, oxygen in the air would be ideal as the battery would not have to carry the weight of the oxygen attached to another element.
It would make the battery interesting however, as the battery would get heavier as it discharges as the oxygen goes from a gas to a solid oxide. Still, it's a very promising technology. Though there are hurdles to overcome, once a working model is developed, it will change the industry.