All of us at one point or another have been frustrated with
our phone’s batteries either because they don’t last long enough or charge fast
enough. Lithium-ion has been the
standard battery material in phones and elective vehicles since its discovery,
but it seems its development has climaxed and it can no longer satisfy our
power needs. Several researchers have been looking for the next thing to replace
the lithium-ion which is also affordable and can lower the price of smartphones and electric-powered vehicles like the Elon Musk's Tesla. Even though smartphone companies
have introduced new technologies like fast charging, wireless charging or even a
combination of both, these are often found on high-end devices with not so affordable
price tags. And even if you can afford
these high-end devices, it still takes over an hour to fully charge your large
4000mah battery. But what if we could
have a more affordable option which not only lasts longer but also charges way
faster? I’d be down for that and am sure you will too.
Samsung about two years ago (at the time of writing) announced a new battery technology using a new
material that could revolutionize the mobile phone industry, and its called graphene
ball. With this new material, battery capacity will be increased by 45% without
any need to increase the size of the battery. That means Samsung can keep making
stylish phones with either a decrease to the thickness or at worst staying the
same while increasing the battery capacity by almost 50%. That’s not all the graphene ball can offer as
it also has up to five times faster-charging speeds when compared to the
standard lithium-ion battery. With a bit of calculation, I deduced that the
galaxy note 10 plus which was released this year will take just 13 minutes to fully
charge instead of the 1 hour 5 minutes
it takes now. A 45% increase in capacity also means a 6235mAh battery instead
of the 4300mAh it has now all without any change in the actual size of the
battery, pretty amazing. It is rumored that Samsung could release a device with
this technology as early as next year which
could be huge for them and for the industry as a whole.
Ok, let's address the elephant in the
room, explosions. After the galaxy note debacle in 2016 it's reasonable to be
skeptical about Samsung and their batteries but the good news is that this new
material cannot explode and is one of the reasons why Samsung took it’s research
into it very seriously. So with this technology not only are we getting longer-lasting batteries with insane charging speeds, but we are also getting safer ones
as well.