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<\/a><\/p>\nThere\u2019s another hero in this story, though, one that whose victories go unsung. The battery. While everyone knows that battery life matters, the battery itself is often ignored in the story of the modern laptop. Gains are assumed to come from processor improvements or more efficient screens.<\/p>\n
In fact, batteries have changed over the last half-decade, and in doing so they\u2019ve enabled systems that are razor-thin, yet last all day, and can continue that performance for several years. Here\u2019s the untold story of the humble battery.<\/p>\n
Evolution, not revolution<\/h3>\n
Enthusiasts, fans and shoppers love to hear about new chips, new designs, new technology. The battery, to its misfortune, doesn\u2019t offer that. Today\u2019s notebooks rely on lithium-ion cells, which have been around for decades, and were first used commercially in the early 1990s.<\/p>\n
\u201cBatteries aren\u2019t a device that never existed before. It\u2019s not a transition from tapes to CDs. It\u2019s evolutionary, not revolutionary,\u201d said\u00a0Rick Thompson, Dell\u2019s Battery Technologist in the Office of CTO. While there\u2019s a wide variety of research projects investigating potential battery breakthroughs, none of them are on the cusp of becoming a commercial reality. \u201cIt\u2019s easy to say you\u2019ve got a battery that charges in one minute, or is optimized for some other performance metric. But what\u2019s the weight? What\u2019s the power? What\u2019s the cost?\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s that last matter, in particular, that\u2019s made new battery technologies difficult to pursue. Laptop manufacturers endure notoriously thin profit margins, so there\u2019s no room to experiment with drastically more expensive batteries.<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not to say the technology hasn\u2019t changed. It\u2019s evolved rapidly, and that evolution has transformed modern laptop batteries. Dell <\/a>has seen energy density improve by up to 35 percent over just the last few years. A variety of techniques are used to achieve these gains, from slight changes in battery chemistry, to a slimmer insulating layer separating the positive and negative sections of each cell. Such steps don\u2019t make for great headlines, as a radical new innovation would, but over time they add up to real gains.<\/p>\n Packaging, a decidedly un-sexy term, is\u00a0another source of battery innovation. Laptops from the last decade often used a standardized cell, designed for all notebooks regardless of size.<\/p>\n \u201cFive years ago, almost all our systems used cylindrical batteries,\u201d explained Phil Jakes, Lenovo\u2019s Director of Strategic Technology Innovation. \u201cThey were AA-like cells called 18650s.\u201d Manufacturers didn\u2019t request batteries to fit their laptops, but instead designed laptops to fit the batteries.<\/p>\n That begin to change at beginning of this decade, as the MacBook Air and Intel\u2019s ultrabook initiative caught on. Consumers wanted thinner systems, but also expected them to last just as long \u2013 if not longer \u2013 than before. \u201cThe drive for thinner systems moved us to lithium-polymer pouch cells, which are for the most part rectangular,\u201d Mr. Jakes said. These new cells can be more easily crammed into small spaces and spread across the width of a notebook. Even these might be soon be replaced\u00a0by\u00a0custom-designed\u00a0batteries, a trend that\u2019s being pushed by smartphones and cutting-edge notebooks, like Apple\u2019s MacBook.<\/p>\n Oddly, this improvement in packaging actually hides gains in energy density. Dell\u2019s Thompson explained this, saying \u201cOnce we get to an all-day run time, we just start to shrink the products. Batteries are enabling products to be 15mm thick today.\u201d Manufacturers have the choice to cram in more battery, or reduce size \u2013 and often choose the latter.<\/p>\n Dell\u2019s XPS 13 is an excellent example. The original, which debuted in 2012, was 12.4 inches wide, eight inches deep and seven-tenths of an inch thick. Today\u2019s version is just under a foot wide, slightly shallower, and a tenth of an inch thinner. It also weighs half a pound less. Despite all that, it lasts about twice as long on a charge.<\/p>\n Thompson told us it could last even longer, as it\u2019d have a massive 75 watt-hour Dell xps m1330 laptop battery<\/a><\/strong>(rather than the current 52 watt-hour unit) if the design was never upgraded\u00a0to its current slim-bezel look. But, because the new model already lasts more than a work day, the company decided to slim it instead.<\/p>\n Of course, excellent battery life isn\u2019t of much use if out-of-the-box performance degrades too quickly. It\u2019s a known fact that all lithium-ion batteries, no matter how they\u2019re built or what they\u2019re placed in, wear out. Fortunately, endurance has been as much a focus as energy density.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing a movement to a much longer calendar life expectation. Batteries are typically captured today, embedded in a system. They\u2019re not intended to be swapped out, so we have to look at overall life,\u201d said Dell\u2019s Thompson. While cynics often state manufacturers are using built-in batteries as a way to encourage planned obsolesce, Dell doesn\u2019t see it that way. The company knows rapidly degrading Dell vostro 3500 Series battery<\/a> <\/strong>performance will make users unhappy \u2013 and less likely to buy a Dell the next time around.<\/p>\n Lenovo\u2019s Phil Jakes told us his company has a similar stance, and also said battery endurance has improved significantly in recent years. Design changes made in the leap from the older, cylindrical batteries to newer, prismatic models have\u00a0improved charge cycles from a maximum of around 500 to about 1,000. And a battery that\u2019s considered worn isn\u2019t useless \u2013 while tolerances for wear differ from one company to the next, most cells offer 60 to 70 percent of their original capacity at end-of-life.<\/p>\n There is no battery revolution on the horizon. Our lives would be changed if a new technology doubled energy density overnight, but that\u2019s a foolish dream. Batteries are bound by physical realities encoded in the laws of the universe. Evolution has always been the\u00a0battery game, and will remain so for the foreseeable future.<\/p>\n Still, batteries deserve credit. A thousand small steps forward doesn\u2019t make the headlines of one giant leap, but it\u2019s progress all the same.\u00a0It\u2019s true that processors, graphics chips, screens and hard drives consistently demand efficiency, but the dramatic increase in battery life witnessed in recent years can\u2019t be explained by them alone. The unseen, unappreciated battery is just as important, and we couldn\u2019t\u00a0enjoy today\u2019s ultra-slim laptops without it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The wonders of modern notebooks have risen year by year. Profile slim and display more pixel processor acceleration packs. Today, laptops are so powerful that desktops are becoming obsolete for many users. There\u2019s another hero in this story, though, one that whose victories go unsung. The battery. While everyone knows that battery life matters, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,6],"tags":[479,882,50],"class_list":["post-1867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-battery-knowledge-base","category-laptop-batteries-tips","category-tech-info","tag-dell-latitude-e6320-laptop-battery","tag-dell-vostro-3500-series-battery","tag-dell-xps-m1330-laptop-battery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battaussie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battaussie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battaussie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battaussie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battaussie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1867"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.battaussie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1869,"href":"https:\/\/www.battaussie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1867\/revisions\/1869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.battaussie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battaussie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.battaussie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Size matters<\/h3>\n
Longevity is better than you think<\/h3>\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n