[Cyclone]

Toshiba has developed a new battery that can be charged 80% in 1 minute, thats right not 1 hour, 1 minute. Its still a prototype battery but it is already being planed for testing in a few lines of mobile phones and other devices. This battery also fatigues less than the current Lithium-Ion batteries. It only looses 1% of its capacity over 1000 charges. I hope that this is the way battery technology will go, with this battery there will be much less need to have a removable battery because even if you forget to charge your player/phone all you have to do is stick it on the charger for a little over a minute or two to get over 80% of your battery life back. There will still be the issue of the battery eventually dying from charging fatigue but this is also reduced with the new technology. Prices are likely to be high in the beginning but mellow out after it is an established technology, just like the current Lithium-Ion batteries.

 

[masteraleph]

If you assume that one charge will hold through a day's use (depending on the size of the battery and such), using it for 5 years would lose you <5% of the charge capacity for sure. Which means, if you think about it, that the HDD in your DAP is quite likely to fail before you have to replace your battery.

 

[notnormal]

Kinetic is the way to go, not batteries. If only they were efficient enough for HDD players!

 

[allenf]

Developments along these lines are likely to have profound implications in automobile technology too.

 

[Naga]

mini hydrogen fuel cells, but thats really far off

 

[gn925106ng]

sounds kinda like the new sony walkmans... 3 mins = 3 hours

 

[jefemeister]

I don't really care about charge time, I just want a laptop battery that can provide at least 8 hours of full-out computing and is significantly lighter and smaller than today's.