The Critical Smartphone Issue That Manufacturers Ignore

Nokia DT-903 Qi Wireless Charger (image: Ewan Spence)

I’ve spent the last ten days in Austin attending the various strands of SXSW. I’ve been doing so for the last eleven years, and one issue that has become clear over the last few years, and acutely aware of this year, is just how ill-served consumers are over a critical part of smartphone design. Modern batteries are too small.

When I first started at SXSW, my smartphone allowed me to stay connected throughout a whole day, and a whole evening, without me having to make any special considerations. While the ABC mantra of ‘always be charging’ applied to my laptop (hilariously, I was using the Compaq TC-1000 Windows Tablet and everyone wondered if this keyboard-less device was a gimmick or a genuine tool to be used, how times have changed), I never had a concern for my smartphone. If I wanted email, IM, a web page, or to run an application, I just did so, and never thought twice about it.

At the end of the day, the smartphone had around 30-40% of battery life left, it went on overnight charge, and I did the same again the next day. I knew I was hitting the battery hard while out and about, but that was fine. For a long time I considered SXSW to be a brutal but fair testing ground for new smartphones.

Joseph (L) and Sam Russell, brothers from Melbourne, Australia, show off their Jam smartphone app at SXSW (Robert MacPherson/AFP/Getty Images)

This year, every single time I reached for my smartphone to do something, I would worry about battery life. I would worry about how much time I was wiping out from the end of the day, and if checking email or taking a photo was really worth it. Not only am I focused on putting my smartphone on charge every night, but I also have to charge the extended battery in its protective case, as well as a portable USB enabled charger for that super-emergency top-up… at six-thirty in the evening.

For all the style, all the new apps, all the new technology, the biggest change in smartphone use over the last ten years has been the paranoia of preserving battery life.

I realise that part of the issue is the arms race of specifications. Everything demands more power, from the faster processors, the brighter and larger screens, to the extra volumes of RAM, the increasing demands on read/write storage, and even the image sensors in the camera. But even with the small advances in battery technology, the power reserves have not kept pace. Reducing the size of the battery to ensure a more stylish device seems to be the default choice of every designer.

UNITED KINGDOM – FEBRUARY 29: The Psion Series . (Photo by SSPL/Getty Images)

When my first Psion PDA sported over 3700 mAh of battery life, would have an always on time of forty hours, and a real-world usage time that exceeded two weeks, I find it hard to take seriously the idea that today’s modern smartphones consider reaching eighteen hours of real-world usage as an improvement.

There are third-party solutions, from external ‘rescue’ batteries and power-charging cases, to increasingly efficient chargers and aggressive OS coding, but the simple fact is that today’s smartphones simply do not have enough power

The rush to have stylish, sexy, thin phones has created a pernicious cycle in terms of real-world usage of today’s smartphones. It’s as if manufacturers have decided that only looks will sell a smartphone, so they work on ever thinner devices, creating a poorer user experience because of the smaller internal volume available for power, and the only way to sell their phone over another is to be… even sexier.

When a smartphone is released the first thought should not be ‘when will Mophie release a battery pack for my handset?‘. There is a huge industry built around recharging accessories, and while I commend the entrepreneurial nature of this, it’s filling in a gap that in my opinion is the responsibility of the manufacturer to address. Wireless charging, partial charging at a rapid rate, faster ‘flat to one hundred percent’ times are all sticking plasters over the issue. One you move away from a wired power source (be it your office, home, or hotel room), your smartphone is hobbled. You can run long, or you can run fast. You can’t do both.

There is a simple answer. Increase the size of the battery. Not by a few percentage points, but by a significant amount. Bring back another two or three millimeters to the thickness of our handsets, fill up that new-found volume with power, and give everyone the confidence to use their smartphones to the very cutting edge of their ability. I would much rather that than having to choose between keeping my smartphone working all day with hobbled features, or going flat in a blaze of glory by midday.

Burning effigies of Apple products (MIKE CLARKE/AFP/Getty Images)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/03/21/smartphone-battery-life-review/2/