Ever-since, the innovation of the smartphones started, the biggest challenge till date remains unsolved. That is the battery, which provides power to the device. Imagine a mobile phone without colour screen, camera, music, video, touch screen, memory and so on. These are the modern requirements for a mobile device. It is not just a mobile phone now a day as it was, back in days.
The revolution of smartphone was initiated by Nokia back in 2005-6 and gone wild since the launch of Apple's iPhone 3G, which at time was the top selling mobile phone all around the world. Apple not only came up with extraordinary design but also a simple and user friendly operating system, which is now known as the iOS. After Apple came up with iPhone 4, they captured maximum market share in mobile phone sales.
Google's Android OS was slowly becoming popular amongst the people who was not able to get iPhone simply because of it's price tag. As Samsung came up with Galaxy S II, they started attracting more consumers towards Android OS. It made Android very popular and became the only competitor of Apple's iOS at that time. Samsung's Galaxy S III then became the highest selling smartphone in the world leaving behind iPhone 4's record.
Though, the war of giving better hardware and software features in a smartphone is ON right now between the two giants, Apple and Samsung, the battery is the main problem. With powerful hardware, one needs a powerful battery to cope with all extra features included in the phone. No smartphone has a battery life of more than a day, and that too, if you use limited features.
Mobiles now a day has captured a great segment of market of the cameras, mp3 players, handheld gaming devices, calculators and a lot by providing more features compactly in the mobile phone. And within next few years, it will overtake some of the laptop market as well.
Back in old days, when a mobile phone was only used for calling and messaging, the battery was powerful enough to go through 3-5 days and may be week. But now it is only 12 to 24 hours depending on the degree of use. Well, the point is, the innovation was concentrated more on hardware and software rather than the power source, battery. If the innovations of battery was paced same as other things in mobile, it should be giving same amount of battery life.
What will be the use of trillions of features in a smart phone if it is not usable because of battery. Imagine going to a remote place and not able to use a wonderful camera you have in your smartphone because there is no battery or a low battery, useless. As the features of mobile phone increases, the battery life have been continuously decreased or remained same thanks to some improvements to the efficient power management plans. But the overall performance of the mobile phone batteries is not so good.
Now, a bit of insight on the market research. The mobile market is booming in developing countries as of in APRIL 2013, 58% of population in developing countries uses mobile phone as compared to only 19% in 2004. But still it’s only 58% of population; it is low compared to the developed countries’ 93%. The demands are all time high in developing countries like China and India. As demand is increasing, companies tries to attract consumers with tons of features, and better usability. But to do that, they have to use a bigger battery, which makes mobiles bigger and heavier because of the bigger battery.
With 3G first and now 4G, battery of a phone will die quicker than ever. Online gaming has arrived to smartphones as well, now this will chew the battery life like never before, thanks to 3G and 4G.
Another market survey, done over "the problems with smartphones" in 2012 shows,
72% said that battery life is the problem
20% said weight and size is problem
8% said cost is the issue
Most of the people complained, that if they use the other features of the phone like, mp3 songs, games, videos, internet, the battery life decreases to 4 hours on an average. 82% said, they prefer not to use other features freely if they are not at home. This is not why other features have been added to the mobile phones, if they are not able to use it. 95% said, they will be more happy if they can have unlimited use of any feature of a mobile phone, without having a flat battery. When asked, what if there is a new mobile smart phone without battery, 97% said, they will immediately switch to that. Reasons been, that they don’t have to worry about battery or recharging, even though they use all features all the time.
This is where the new innovation starts.
