As I mentioned a few days ago, breakthroughs in battery tech always seem to be two years away, but there have been some modest but worthwhile developments.
One of these, silicon-carbon batteries, is already found in some Android brands, and battery-test results clearly illustrate the benefits. But experts say it will be a little while before Apple adopts the new battery chemistry in future iPhones …
There’s an ongoing arms race between battery capabilities and smartphone features. Batteries have been growing more efficient over the years, but at the same time those gains have been swallowed up by the increased power demands of larger and brighter screens, more powerful processors and so on.
While most improvements in battery tech have been incremental, some of the latest Android phones have switched to a new battery chemistry which does demonstrate a step change in capacity. CNET notes that Chinese brands like Honor, Huawei, and Oppo are switching from lithium-ion batteries to silicon-carbon ones, which offer notably higher energy density and faster charging.
Silicon-carbon batteries aren’t an entirely new type of battery, but rather a next-generation version of lithium-ion technology. Put simply, instead of using graphite in the battery’s anode, manufacturers incorporate a silicon-carbon composite. Because silicon can hold more lithium than graphite, this design allows for higher energy density […] In CNET’s lab testing, nearly half of the phones with the best battery life use silicon-carbon tech.
