energy - Tag Archive

Are smartphone battery life improvements on the way?

12 Replies Joe Pawlikowski

We all want a little more power. Smartphone manufacturers have catered to this desire, as they’ve continually pumped out increasingly powerful devices.

This year we’re seeing many quad-core devices with 1.5GHz processors, powered by 4G LTE networks, and with vibrant high-resolution displays. Yet these high-powered devices are about to hit a wall if we don’t see some critical changes in battery efficiency. Without adequate battery life, even the most powerful smartphone is useless.

Thankfully, there are a few reasons to believe that we’ll see appropriate improvements in the near future. Here are three reasons why we will see smartphone battery life improve in the coming months and years. It will be a great boon to consumers, who will be able to use their phones heavily for longer.

1. Consumer disappointment

Earlier this year, Motorola made something of a bold move. In a world of thinning smartphones, it actually released, and heavily marketed, a smartphone that is considerably thicker than many of its other models.

This only worked, however, because with the increased thickness came greater battery life. By most reasonable tests, the Droid RAZR MAXX lasts nearly twice as long on a single battery charge than most of its competitors.

The rationale behind this marketing campaign was simple. People love their smartphones, but get frustrated when they can’t last on a single charge throughout a day. Again, a powerless smartphone is a useless smartphone.

You can stuff all the features in the world under the hood of a phone, but if people need to constantly recharge in order to use those features there’s not a lot to be gained. Improved battery life will simply become a necessity that manufacturers cannot ignore.

2. Changing energy trends

The way we consume energy is always changing. The recent technology revolution will change it yet again. Most of our modern computing devices employ DC power, but our wall sockets deliver AC power. That leads to a few inefficiencies, since the difference requires a converter of sorts, whether that’s in the device or in the power source itself. We might see that change in short order.

As Technology Review notes, there is a growing demand for DC current source. It is possible that we could see power companies start to deliver DC power to our outlets in the next few decades, which should make the whole charging and powering process more efficient. The lack of conversion could make that big a difference.

Yet, given our consume-driven culture, it probably won’t make as much of a difference as my next point.

3. Apple’s doing it

It seems that whatever Apple does, other companies copy. Apple has long been an iconic force in technology, and their iPad and iPhone empire has helped solidify its spot at the top.

What they do with the iPhone 5 could again change the smartphone industry. As GigaOM’s Kevin Tofel notes, Apple could focus on battery life with the new iPhone, rather than creating another thinner model. He cites the increased battery capacity of the new iPad, which seems reasonable enough.

Improving smartphone batteriesIf Apple does indeed create a thicker smartphone that focuses on battery life, others will be pressed to follow suit. Remember, Apple essentially tells consumers what they want. Perhaps they wanted it previously – and plenty of customers have demanded better battery life from smartphones – but Apple does have the definitive word.

It’s hard to explain, but it’s clearly the case based on how the smartphone industry has developed. If Apple goes for battery life, we can expect others to jump on the bandwagon too.

Battery life has become a pressing issue for the future of smartphones. Manufacturers have created devices that are as powerful as full-sized computers of recent memory. Now they need adequate power for them.

Since a powerless smartphone is a useless smartphone, expect companies to jump on the better-battery bandwagon soon enough. Apple could get things kick-started this year. Things will likely develop rapidly from there.

What is Synthetic Biology?

4 Replies Jonny Hankins

In my work I write about nanotechnology and synthetic biology and over the next couple of weeks I would like to describe what is happening in these high technology fields. I start with synthetic biology. I am not a scientist and cannot give any form of technical description of how they do what they do. I can present a kind of sketch though of what they are doing and their aims.

The first question then must be what is synthetic biology? Well it is something that can be described as engineering, biology, genetics or nanotechnology, the most common description is that of applying the concept of engineering to biological organisms. But what does that actually mean?

Well, synthetic biology aims to design and engineer biologically based parts, novel devices and systems as well as redesigning existing, natural biological systems. Practitioners use a systems approach, an organism is seen as a whole, or a system, and can therefore be engineered, very much like a machine.

you see, kid's stuff

The system is reduced to biological parts (bioparts) whose function is expressed in terms of input/output characteristics. Once these parts have been described in terms of their function, isolated, standardised and syntheticaly reproduced, they can then be combined to from new organisms, very much in the way that an engineer would build a machine using standard devices built from standard parts. It is just that they are parts of a living organism.

These standard parts are defined by their DNA, and this can be manipulated in order to make the perfect part for the perfect device. Parts of the DNA can be removed and synthetic pieces used to replace them. Create the right part that does the right job, put in it a carrier cell (known as chassis) and Bob’s your Uncle, you can start to construct your organism.

The Biobricks Foundation is a not for profit organization that aims to keep a register of these standard parts, maintaining open access and promoting technical standardization, something that is seen as holding the key to the further development of synthetic biology.

Obviously to do all of the above you require technical expertise, the process requires computational modeling in order to analyze the complexities of biological entities and to predict system performance. You require DNA sequencing in order to describe the genome and then of course DNA synthesis, to re-produce either part of or the entire genome itself.

But what are the potential areas of application for this technology, and what can they actually do now?

One of the main fields is undoubtedly medicine. Drugs can be produced that are more effective or have fewer or even no side effects, as the genomes of their active components can be adjusted and synthesized. An example is the development of a synthetic version of the anti-malarial drug Artermisinin that could be industrially and cheaply mass produced, and in the near future antibiotics could become much more efficient.

Another existing application is water that changes colour when in contact with different polluting agents making them instantly recognizable. Switches already exist that react to certain types of input. An example could be a cell that is part of a person’s body that reacts to the stimulus of a certain chemical that in turn stimulates the production of another. Imagine for example a device that reacts to a chemical produced by a cancerous cell. This input causes a reaction that produces another chemical to counteract this presence. All working naturally using the body’s energy to function.

Other developments involve the energy sector, the production of plants for bio mass that are not as wasteful as those used today and even the development of synthetic aviation fuels.

In other fields a synthetic form of the silk produced by the Golden Orb spider is under development. This is an extremely strong, fine and lightweight material that could lead the way towards new specialist engineering materials.

They are even working on living computer memory, and  this article describes breakthroughs and results in DNA computing.

Well this is nothing but reasonable, my memory lives in my brain and the memory of my ancestors in my DNA, and now they have the technology to read it and even change it, so why not use it in a computer?

I have written several articles on this and other related topics on the Bassetti Foundation website, and as I said I am no scientist, so all comments and criticism invited and accepted.

A review of the environment and power series

9 Replies Jonny Hankins

Here I would like to review the series and look at the way people commented the individual posts, before concluding with a few lines about the experience.

Renewable energy renewing the Earth

In my first post I introduced the idea of environmental cost. This was the measurement that I wanted to use to address the issue of pollution, and more specifically that produced through energy use.

I tried to avoid the term ‘clean energy’, as I feel this overlooks certain aspects of all forms of production. Modern solar panels for example may provide clean energy from the sun but they themselves present issues during their manufacturing and disposal phases.

Another point I hoped to raise is that the problem needs to be viewed from a realistic standpoint. We are not all going to convert to a zero emissions life overnight any more than we are going to return to being a hunter and collector society that lives in caves. The world will continue to operate more or less as it does now, and it is through this framework that the problem should be addressed.

The first comment I received contained the following line from Vicky, and it really is worthy of note:

“I believe that each of us can help a lot in improving the health of our planet, the only problem is that we have great vision but no action. Why don’t we act first and through that action we start making some vision?” This is echoed by the quote from Gandhi that I used to open the first post, and could really be a manifesto for the series.

The second post was about cutting fuel emissions from transport systems, and it received a couple of interesting comments. Darci commented that even cutting emission by 30% (referring to the commercial use of Kites on ships) would be a great improvement, and I must agree with her. Neil’s comment included the following lines that are worth thinking about:

“It seems to me that over the past decade the builders of internal combustion engines have made some great breakthroughs in generating more energy from their engines with the same amount of input and we have seen the KW output of many engines jump significantly. It would be good to see these same producers working backwards to produce smaller engines that produce an adequate amount of power from a minimal amount of fuel.” An extremely astute comment I would say.

Post 3 entitled Cleaner Energy Production was one of the most commented of the series. I think this is because the technology described is on the verge of becoming commercially available, and because solar panels are now an every day piece of urban furniture.

The article also provoked a series of comments lead by the following from Custom Items:

“These are a great bunch of suggestions. It’s really sad that we all what we need and what is right but can’t do anything about it. I’ve always felt that the government was taking sides with the big corporations. In this world of ours, money and power talks.”

This obviously provoked discussion with the other commenters in agreement with the sentiment, some seeming to suggest that development is hindered by large corporations and governments and that although the people recognize the need for change they may be incapable of achieving it.

Not all doom and gloom though and I for one am optimistic and agree with some of the brighter outlooks expressed.

Post 4 was all about a report published by the Royal Society for Engineering in which they looked at possible ways of artificially cooling the planet. Again many comments were left, a couple of which raise issues that should be addressed.

The post involves the problematic debate around global warming. Two comments really show the diversity of belief that surrounds the issue, even though not taking radical standpoints. The following comment was made by Shane Ryans:

“In my opinion the earth has gone through many different cycles, throughout its lifetime. The earth has gone through ice ages so why would there not have been, for lack of a better word, “hot” ages. What makes today so different from the past. We are just going into yet another cycle. Now that being said, I am sure that we as a race have made the circumstances different and added to the problem and sped up the process, with all the different chemicals and air pollutants we have introduced into our environment. I do hope that scientists can come up with a viable solution”.

Although Shane does not make the line that humans do not contribute to the problem, many people do, and go on to argue that the greenhouse effect does not exist. From their point of view any change is merely a product of nature. People that espouse this line have powerful lobbies, and invest large sums of money to promote their line to the point that the debate has become a business, and dirty tricks and smear campaigns abound. See this page on Wikipedia for plenty of information and links to further reading

Returning to the post a second comment made by Virtual Stock Trading runs as follows, the edit is mine but you can see the original comment where it was left:

“I don’t think there is any doubt on global warning…….. But the process is very gradual and will not significantly affect anyone living today.”

I cannot agree with the final line. Global warming is affecting communities all over the world as we speak. Sea levels are rising and threatening the very survival of some of theMaldivesIslands, flooding is rife in low-lying countries and London has to thank the Thames Barrier to avoid Joe Strummer’s classic prediction. And a simple look at its use tells a story, it was closed four times in the 1980s, 35 times in the 1990s, and 80 times since 2000.

Post 5 was a review of inventions and power generating machines that profess to generate free or pollution free energy. It did not generate the number of comments that the previous posts managed, but Samantha returned to the non support from governments and big business argument once more:

“Actually, there are so many inventions nowadays that can actually lessen our cost and pollution as well. However, they are having problems of getting support from our government. Of course, this body is after of money from businesses like big petroleum companies.”

From a personal point of view writing the series gave me great satisfaction. I have all the articles on a single file and it looks like a small book! I wrote 2 of the articles before posting the first, as Christopher suggested, and it was a very good idea. I wanted to reply to each comment and that took a lot of time, so I found it quite a strain researching while the series was running (each post took about 6-8 hours to research and write).

I found all of the comments interesting, and thank everyone who took the time to post. I did not have the problem that I sometimes have of people missing the point. I do not like to express my arguments too openly and rely on a bit of intuition, and sometimes this is lacking and I find comments that express the opposite of what I wanted to convey. This was not the case during the series, and that pleases me.

I can definitely recommend the experience, and will undoubtedly write another.

UPDATE: Jonny has compiled a fantastic PDF publication of his series which contains every article in the series, and the responses each article got. You can view it on the blog here Can We Improve the Health of the Planet? A series by Jonny Hankins.