BATTERY SPECIAL..................... Batteries Sans Smarts Get Power Banks Charged Up

Batteries Sans Smarts Get Power Banks Charged Up   THE BACK-UP Fast-draining batteries boost demand for on-the-go charging options For the critics, Apple has left something in the new iPhone to harp on: the battery. One reviewer called the iPhone 6s a very good phone ruined by “rubbish battery life“. This, in fact, is a problem area across the smartphone spectrum, with a juicier battery remaining the perennial wish of the user. As battery technology failed to keep pace with an increasingly smarter smartphone, handset manufacturers have resorted to workarounds, such as making the phone frugal on energy to shrinking the rest of the hardware so that there is space for a bigger battery. But since these alone won't fulfill the energy demand of today's phones with HD screens, high-pixel-count cameras, video streaming, self-updating apps, gaming and more, an entire industry has emerged too, offering a whole lot of stuff from fast wireless chargers to power banks to keep the increasingly gorgeous and slimmer smartphone awake. “Nearly 30% of our annual smartphone unit sales have power banks bundled in,“ said Alok Gupta, managing director and chief executive of The Mobile Store, India's largest cellphone retailer. The advent of 3G and 4G services, which are data-centric and so power-hungry as well, has boosted demand for stuff like power banks, he said.“Two years ago, less than 1% of our annual smartphone sales had power banks bundled in.“ While buyers do want phones with longer battery life, looks often steal the show and the slimmer ones are preferred more, say industry executives. That is limiting the room to fit in a more powerful battery . Longer battery life would mean a larger battery , and a thicker and heavier phone that the typical customer won't like, they say . “Two out of three consumers prefer slimmer smartphones vis-à-vis phones with bigger batteries that are thicker, which prompted us to explore ways to optimise a smartphone's operating system to make it run longer,“ said Navin Chawla, vice-president and products head at local smartphone maker Lava International. Battery technology “is still a long way from providing ultra-slim, higher capacity variants that can be economically produced and are safe“, he said. Micromax, India's No 2 handset maker, said despite intensive research on packing in more power in slimmer cells, it has yet to see “concrete results“. That means, heavy smartphone users like former school teacher Payal Chattopadhyay would continue to be frustrated by the battery that drains out every few hours. “I WhatsApp a lot and love shooting and sharing photos with my smartphone and it's very frustrating when the battery drains out real quick after I've used the flash a bunch of times and uploaded photos,“ Chattopadhyay said. “There's clearly a gap in what top smartphone brands offer by way of battery life and what 3G4G customers actually require,“ she added. “There's a need for smartphone batteries to evolve,“ said Manish Sharma, managing director at the local unit of Panasonic, a major smartphone battery manufacturer. Researchers are trying to find ways to improve power capacity, optimise hardware and software, and come up with faster charging solutions, he said. Smartphone vendors and ecosystem partners such as US chipmaker Qualcomm are indeed developing fast wireless charging, software upgrades and gadgets like power banks to deal with the problem, but these steps don't address the real issue of adding more punch to the battery itself. Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi said it has designed one of “the smallest and thinnest motherboards“ for its flagship Mi 4i range of smartphones to make space for “a huge 3120 mAH battery, which can run for a day and half with normal usage. Motorola and Lenovo, along with a clutch of smaller brands such as Mitashi, Philips, Gionee and Xolo, have come up with phones with strong battery capacities, ranging between 3900 mAh and 5300 mAh.But these products are heavier and not among the most popular choices of the smartphone user. The iPhone 6s has a modest 1715 mAh battery , lower than the older iPhone 6 that has a battery strength of 1810 mAh. The fancy Samsung Galaxy S6 has a 2550 mAh battery . Higher the mAh, or millampere-hour, the better the battery capacity . The companies though say upgrades in the phones have made them run longer than earlier versions. Samsung, the global and India market leader in smartphones, and Qualcomm said one of the areas they are focusing on is superfast charging technology. Samsung's adaptive fast charge technology enables a Galaxy S6 user to get four hours of usage by charging the phone for 10 minutes and a 50% charge in 30 minutes, said a Samsung Electronics India spokesman. The company is also applying a new method to “significantly enhance the capacity of lithium-ion batteries“

Kalyan Parbat

ET10OCT15: