Smartphones today are becoming slimmer, bezels are shrinking, processors are getting faster, and more software features are added. Unfortunately, when it comes to battery technology, there's nothing terribly exciting happening at the moment. Or is there?
According to a report published by Nature, Samsung's Advanced Institute of Technology has been working with graphene to both increase battery capacity and drastically reduce recharge times. Samsung's used the material to create a "graphene ball" – a special coating that's used inside a typical lithium-ion battery that's found in most modern smartphones.
With the graphene ball, Samsung has reportedly been able to increase battery capacity by as much as 45-percent and increase the speed of charging by five times.
There's currently no time-frame as to when this tech will make its way to consumers.
Devices like the Huawei Mate 10 and Pixel 2 XL already offer tremendous battery life, but imagine their current performance enhanced by 45%. OnePlus's Dash Charge system is crazy fast, and while getting "a day's power in half an hour" is convenient, possibly being able to charge your phone from 0 to 100-percent in less than 20 minutes is out of this world.
Better yet, Samsung's team that's been working on the graphene ball report that batteries with the new tech still hold a charge retention of 78-percent even after 500 total charge cycles. In other words, you can get wild recharge times without having to worry nearly as much about degrading the quality of the battery itself.
Samsung has filed patents for this graphene ball in both the United States and South Korea, but it's unclear for the time being when we'll see this technology implemented into smartphones that we can actually buy and use. We're likely a few years off before any of this comes to market, but the fact that this tech exists and is actively being worked on is still extremely exciting.
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