Toshiba's New Battery Charging Technology: 80% in One Minute
Everyone knows that the day they solve the battery bottleneck, is the day we really get cooking with technology. Today we all are held hostage by a host of electronic devices with limited battery life, a clogged jumble of chargers, and the endless beeping of these gadgets as they lose battery power. (Or is that just me?! -- Alice)
So what of we are doomed to charging things daily for awhile? That's what some smarty at Toshiba must have decided when he tackled the problem in a new way: make the charge time shorter. Much shorter.
"According to an announcement made today, Toshiba has improved on its existing Lithium Ion battery technology through the implementation of nanoparticles which aid in preventing the rapid disassembly of organic electrolytes witnessed in current batteries, allowing for rapid charging and a massive improvement in battery capacity loss over time.
"Toshiba claims its new battery is capable of obtaining a charge of 80% in as short time as a minute, and also produced test results showing that following a test cycle of 1,000 charges and depletions, the decrease seen in battery capacity was a mere 1%. Aiming to commercialize the technology in 2006, Toshiba did not comment on whether pricing levels for batteries based on the new technology would remain similar to current battery pricing." Source: InfoSync World
A battery that could charge up in a couple of minutes would be nice... I'm still waiting for the wire-free recharging pad that MobileWise (with their dead website) was talking about in 2002. Geek.com said MobileWise was in "stealth mode"then... they are apparently still committed to this "stealth" thing!
Some analysis: Say your batter is a 125WH battery. 80% is 100WH, which means a perfectly efficient battery would draw 100 watts for an hour to charge. That would be 6000 watt minutes.
I believe this is the power draw for a whole house airconditioning unit. These typically use 2x220 volt circuits in the U.S.
Those are good comments - how big the brick would be (my little ThinkPad brick can burn a hole in the rug when I have it going for some time.) and then how much power it would consume. I will research more - these are great questions.
And I will track down the recharging pads. I remember those too, and thought one came to market.
The charging mats are not available yet as far as I know, but here's a place that says they will be sometime this year: http://splashpower.com/solution/overview.html
Everyone knows that the day they solve the battery bottleneck, is the day we really get cooking with technology. Today we all are held hostage by a host of electronic devices with limited battery life, a clogged jumble of chargers, and the endless beeping of these gadgets as they lose battery power. (Or is that just me?! -- Alice)