At a recent Google event the search engine giant’s co-founder raised an important issue that is still very much an unsolved problem for the mobile industry.
Larry Page mentioned that if your Android phone’s battery doesn’t make it through the day, there’s “something wrong”, while Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt added that there are some apps that are not as “smart” when it comes to power consumption.
Both remarks hit a pain point for the industry which has been suffering from an acute lack of power for some time now.
From the early days when camera phones were still evolving, and pixels and features were only just being added, the increasing demand for power was already being made clear, and the surge in demand just keeps ascending.
Add to phone cams GPS capability, wi-fi, multi-touch screens, high end GPUs and dual core CPUs, and ye old average cell phone battery quickly runs into problems.
Chip manufacturers are trying to come up with a fix by upgrading chip performance whilst reducing power consumption, which is all well and good, but clearly not yet enough to keep up with power demands.
Meanwhile, device manufactures are aware of the problem, Nokia for example has even called the dilemma “the biggest challenge” faced by the mobile industry today.
Samsung has attempted to get around the issue with several solar panel aided mobile devices, which can purportedly be charged just by putting the device under direct sunlight, but these have pretty much failed to take off.
It’s not the first time Samsung has tried to tackle the power problem either. Back in 2008 the firm started working on a micro fuel cell and hydrogen battery, but for one reason or other has frozen development on the research.
Another approach was taken by electronics firm Philips, which attempted to use other available tools already at its disposal. Philips introduced the Xenium series which runs on AAA batteries for an easy swap and use solution. But this too failed to become very popular.
And just this month, Nokia announced a bicycle charger kit, a simple dynamo which charges Nokia devices. Whether this fix to the eternal power problem gathers speed and momentum remains to be seen, but one thing is for certain:
With no clear fix in the near future, consumers will have to become more “power efficient” regarding their mobile devices, or it won’t be long before we will all have to carry an additional battery with us. Not an appealing option.
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