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Smart phone… dumb battery ?

Green IT week – May 2014

Thomas CORVAISIER – CEO, The Green Little Men

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Smartphones are wonderful.

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The average smartphone is charged

every day

At least.

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Agenda

1. My smartphone’s battery is too small!

2. Let’s look at some technical solutions…

3. … is there another way out ?

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My smartphone battery is way too small

And… it’s getting smaller!

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Battery life is a concern

Battery life is #1 purchase driver for smartphones IDC Survey, April 2014

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Battery capacity from 2004 to 2011

Source : Eric EASON, Dec. 2010

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/eason1/

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Top 2013 smartphones

Average battery capacity : 2,350 mAh

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Top 2014 smartphones

Average battery capacity : 2,570 mAh +10% increase

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A smartphone is a small device

■ Battery design is limited by physical constraints: ● a few cm long / wide, ● a few mm thick

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Batteries are not diamonds

■ Capacity drops with time ● A pool of new 1500mAh Li-ion batteries for

smartphones is tested. ● All packs show a starting capacity of 88–94 percent

and decrease in capacity to 73–84 percent after 250 full discharge cycles.

Source : Cadex, 2010

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A battery is based upon chemistry

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Some recent progress

■ Progress is still there, but slowing down

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Battery density progress

■ Performance in battery density hasn’t progressed much for 20 years

Conclusion: ● Battery capacity is capped by the device’s size.

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Power demand increases

■ In the meantime, power demande inside the smartphone has increased

■ Mainly due to the new features being available : Wider screens GPS 3G, now 4G/LTE NFC Better audio rendering, and so on…

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Buying bigger phones

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A new trend : caring more about power

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Let’s look at some solutions

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Three ways to get more power at any time:

1. Better batteries Wanted: innovative technology

2. Alternative power supplies If 1 battery is not enough, get 2

3. Harvesting power devices

Carry your own personnal power plant

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1 – Better batteries ■ Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries have established themselves as a leader in energy and

power densities for mobile applications. These batteries account for a market worth more than $10 billion. However, the reign of Li-ion will soon be threatened by next-generation batteries.

■ Operating systems like Microsoft Windows or Apple OS X are increasingly being deployed in handheld smart phones and tablets and system complexities will only grow with time and in smaller, thinner devices. Batteries are a major roadblock today on the way to this goal: The thin, small, lightweight batteries of today simply do not pack the energy required by truly novel consumer electronics.

■ The incumbent, Li-ion, will put up a worthy fight but by 2020, solid-state will draw close as current complex manufacturing processes that are a challenge today are solved, costs fall and energy densities rise. From this foundation, it will surge past Li-ion in technical value by 2030.

■ Li-S will also make strong progress, but won’t quite match the well-rounded value propositions of solid-state and advancing Li-ion, finding only niche consumer electronics applications that prize excellent specific energy above all else.

■ Li-air is a non-factor in this sector, hampered by its volumetric inefficiency and its need for peripherals.

■ The road to technologies like Li-air, Li-S, and solid-state batteries is long, but the time to start paying attention and tracking the development of specific companies, technologies and applications is now. ● Source: Lux Research report “Beyond Lithium-Ion: A Roadmap for Next-Generation Batteries” — client

registration required.

22 Solid-state Batteries Will Offer the Highest Technical Value for Consumer Electronics Within 15 Years

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1 – Better batteries: 30 seconds charge

■ Israeli startup StoreDot has demonstrated this April the prototype of a nanodot-based smartphone battery it claims can fully charge in just under 30 seconds.

■ But such claims have already been made by the past… ■ The road to mass-production is long and steep.

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2 – Carry more power

■ Spare battery ● Not all devices have accessible batteries (!) ● battery swapping resets the phone

■ Power supply ● Come in a variety of capacity

and shapes

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Yes, quite a variety of shapes

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He did not get one.

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3. Harvesting

■ Researchers have begun to think about

abandoning batteries altogether.

■ The alternative would mean harvesting energy from sources outside of our devices

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3. When riding your bike…

■ You can charge your smartphone while wheeling around town

Featured: BikeCharge from BikeConsol

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3. When walking, dancing…

■ The battery, developed by Zhong Lin Wang and colleagues at the Georgia Institute of Technology ● converts the kinetic energy from motion into chemical energy ● which can then be used to power any device.

■ By placing the battery on the bottom of a shoe, for example, it could generate energy with every step.

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3. When sunbathing…

■ This Solar Mio Pro is a USB power pack with a solar-charging sidekick.

■ When unfurled, the solar array covers 18.1" x 8.7". ■ Six individual panels are set into a rugged fabric sheet that can

be laid flat or curved to stand vertically

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3. Even when being dressed up!

■ This dress is fitted with flexible solar cells

■ This bikini too!

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Let’s sum it up

■ Current batteries aren’t up to the task

● And won’t be for the years to come

■ Some solutions exist ● But the trade off is always increasing bulk and cost

■ Are we stuck ?

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Is there another way out of here ?

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Power demand is not constant

■ A smartphone’s power consumption depends on its activity

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Let’s work on user’s side!

■ The aim :

● Adjust the settings constantly

so that the device is always up and ready for the task

to perform

Nothing less, but nothing more

● Check that each task is useful

It’s complicated! More than 100 settings in a smartphone What’s for doing what?

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The Android system gives some hints

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Some apps might help

■ Android market stars are ● Juice Defender Battery Doctor

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Simple is beautiful

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Flash GREENiSCORE for quick

check of settings’ quality. The higher the score, the longer the

battery life.

Activate a Profile to change all settings in just one tap

Benchmark with similar devices (to be done)

Analysis of user’s habits, to check progress

Easy Settings management with visual consumption indicator

Battery consumption History (% / Jour…)

Tips and best practices to improve usage

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Our proof of concept

■ Set up in the Green Lab Center, ● Are 2 smartphones doing the same smartphones tricks all day

long.

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At the end of the day…

Afternoon charge boost

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Gathering data

■ The app sends anonymous data to our servers ● Where we drill into it for stats, such as this

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For more information

www.greeniscore.com

Download GREENiSCORE on