Let’s be honest here, there’s one thing holding us all back. It’s about time we talked about it openly because we all try not to mention the massive and obvious problems that we all have…
Batteries.
They’re a bit rubbish really aren’t they?
They’re limiting the range of electric cars and, perhaps more importantly, they’re the reason we have car-chargers, desk chargers and a constant need to sit near to an electrical socket at an airport.
So step forward Apple, who have submitted a patent (couldn’t see that one coming) for a power-saving system. It seems to surround the ability to guess how a phone will be used before reducing the power consumption based on how full the battery is. The full details are below, but to us this sounds like a slightly more intelligent version of the “Low battery, switching on power-saving mode” that most handsets have now.
It seems that this technology, like Google Now, will learn your behaviour and adapt the battery usage to fit..
The method includes determining by, a processor of the mobile electronic device, an estimated use of the mobile electronic device during an upcoming time period; using the estimated use, determining, by the processor, whether an internal power source of the mobile electronic device has sufficient power to continue operation of the mobile electronic device in a first state during the upcoming time period; based on the estimated use and the internal power source, if the internal power source does not have sufficient power, adjusting the one or more characteristics to reduce a power consumption of the mobile electronic device during the upcoming time period.
Hopefully though there’s also some clever battery engineer beavering away on making batteries better, because then I can drive the new electric Mercedes SLS more. Sure, there’s the small matter of the £359,387 that it costs to buy, but….
This is almost an admittance that the new generation of batteries aren’t going to be with us for quite a while yet. I’m pretty sure with Apple’s sheer cash they could be the pioneers of new battery technology if they wanted to.
As far as I’m concerned, ‘intelligent’ power saving they can keep. I can’t see it making that much difference, although I’m quite happy to be proved wrong. What we need is batteries which take a few seconds to charge, keep their charge well, and last a long time (both in terms of daily usage and overall lifetime). It’s not that far away – there are a few different technologies already available, it’s just that the technology to manufacture them does not yet exist.