Next-Gen iOS Devices to Come with Increased Battery Life?
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While electronics manufacturers strive to pack more processing power and more features in their mobile devices, one element they often overlook is the battery: the device may be great, but if its battery only lasts a couple of hours, it’s unlikely it will become a smash hit.
Apple is one of the few companies who really gets it, and constantly innovate in the power management space, from CPU power consumption, to new battery designs.
It appears that the next generation of Apple mobile devices will pack even more power than ever, as Apple recently filed a new patent to significantly increase the capacity of the batteries featured in its mobile devices. According to AppleInsider, the patent filing named “Increasing Energy Density in Rechargeable Lithium Battery Cells” describes new techniques to increase the amount of energy mobile batteries can store, as well as new battery charging techniques.
A battery is composed of several battery cells, and the amount of cells varies depending on the device, and the required battery capacity. The new battery manufacturing and charging techniques would allow Apple to increase the thickness of the active material inside the battery cells, in order to pack more power in battery cells, without increase their size.
According to the application, Apple is in the process of using these new techniques to make battery cells smaller, which would allow Apple to either pack more battery cells in an assembled battery, or reduce the size of its batteries to make room for other components.
Creating these new battery cells is not as easy as it seems though, as these new advanced cells are much more vulnerable to temperature changes,. They also need to be charged at different current levels, depending on the amount of power currently stored by the cells, in order to avoid potential battery damage. To overcome these issues, the patent filing describes various advanced charging techniques, such as dynamically adjusted charging currents based on the battery charge state and the ambient temperature.
A this stage, the devices targeted by this new type of batteries are unknown, but there is no doubt that the technology will eventually find its way into next-generation iPads, iPhones and iPod touches.
