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Poor battery life is a bitter pill we’ve all been forced to swallow in recent years; compromising the safe knowledge you can travel home from work while streaming Spotify and playing Paper Planes, for the ability to, yes, stream Spotify and play Paper Planes on your way to work. Qualcomm, powering hundreds of smartphones and tablets now, is obviously concerned.
Speaking at Qualcomm’s annual Uplinq conference, CEO Dr. Paul Jacobs confirmed that they are looking at all the different battery technologies, and agrees “it doesn’t seem like they’ve progressed as much as it should.” Adding that “while the phones are definitely getting better, battery efficiency is not happening fast enough.”
Instead of looking at ways to solve the battery crisis, Jacobs believes the answer lies in how we charge our devices. For him, recharging a phone more frequently via wireless recharging is a “near-term fix,” as he described it. “That way you recharge it frequently over the day – not fully, but just top it up over the day.”
But that’s not to say Jacobs wouldn’t like to see displays become more power efficient, and while he didn’t say so, I imagine he wouldn’t like to see hardware become “fatter,” as HTC several months back told us was the direct trade-off for battery life.
For me, poor battery life in any smartphone I happen to be using is just a given. While devices such as Motorola’s Droid RAZR are truly trying to change how we consider our smartphones, it’s something not every company is willing to invest in. Guess we’ll have to continue carrying a micro USB cable around with us for a while longer, then.
Image credit: Battery via Shutterstock
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But if you constantly drizzle juice into a battery isn’t the battery going so suffer, thereby shortening it’s capacity so that after a short time it won’t hold a charge at all?
I have an aftermarket battery in my S2 that adds about 40% when it’s properly run in & seems to run cooler under stress as well. I think most manufacturers are a bit skimpy with their battery capacities.
I can’t stand how a lot of manufacturers lock the batteries inside the gadget as well. I’m happy to sacrifice a millimetre of thickness if if means I can swap batteries when needed.
I think this Qualcomm guff is more about shifting it’s own technology rather than really addresssing things.
Obviously you don’t want to be drizzling juice onto a battery cos that’s just a bit too Heston Blumenthal for good taste.
As much as I do love a bit of Blue-menthol, I do agree. On all points.
I swear Lithium ion batteries benefit massively from trickle charging? I think you’re getting confused with old batteries.
Could be wrong — I’m bloody exhausted!
Which we all know is a euphemism for ‘drunk’…
I wasn’t drunk yesterday…honest! I only had two cocktails. And a glass of sancerre (which, by the way, was fucking revolting…I thought sancerre was meant to be nice?! Back to red I go…)
EddyCJ – i think you are right. old ni-cad preferred to be fully flat then recharge but li-on prefer more charges and shouldnt really be left to go fully flat.
Yeah, that’s what I thought.
But I’m just chuffed that I’m not the only one who sits around at 2.30 in the morning haha
Manufacturers have stopped the camera megapixel race and it looks like they can’t go much further with screen resolutions. They always want to go thinner but there really isn’t much point. Hopefully this means the start of the battery life war.
My S3 has pretty decent battery life thanks
Mine’s doing pretty well too
I just have to remember to use the wired headset when I’m at work or the battery gets eaten alive using Bluetooth!
This is never an issue because I decided against one of the more powerful smartphones. When I sat down and thought about it there wasn’t anything that I couldn’t do better with a tablet in the same circumstances. So I went for a cheaper phone with great battery life, it still has wifi for the odd internet emergency but otherwise its just something I have and rarely use especially since I hate using a phone at the best times.
Gizmodo is probably not the site for you then
I sometimes think that there are a lot of techno sheep here that don’t know as much as they think about technology. To me technology for technologies sake is pointless and ridiculous.