Nothing like waking up and forgetting to charge your phone, laptop or other essential daily electronic device.Or nothing like having it die on you in the middle of the day away from your charger.
Why is it that battery technology, or should we say AFFORDABLE good battery technology so out of reach?
Well, it isn't always the battery's fault. Of course, it could be, as some Chinese replacement laptop batteries have been somewhat questionable, but then again, the "Panasonic Made In Japan" ones I bought for my Fujifilm camera that needed a piece of plastic cut off in order to fit (NP-40 size) seem to work great (and we know they aren't Japanese).
So who do we blame? We think it's a three way tie.
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1) You have to blame the manufacturers for using less cells than they could normally cram into a battery pack (say 4 cells in a compartment that can fit 9), as well as the manufacturers using aging Lithium Ion cells that were outdated to begin with from the lowest bidding manufacturer. I guess this should be expected when paying less than $400 for a new laptop, but a little better (or more) cells or more cells couldn't hurt.
2) You have to blame bad software code. I first hand saw this happen when I upgraded my first generation Android tablet from Droid 1.7.2 to 1.7.4 firmware. The optimizations in the software really improved the life of the battery by 25% or one hour. It was incredible. But then why doesn't Windows 7 get 10% better battery life than Windows XP if it is newer code? Well that's because you probably have that eye candy called Aero enabled, causing the Graphics chip to render that partially translucent desktop all the time. That'll kill a battery pretty quick. So we need better code for better battery life. I think this is always going to be a problem.
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3) It's our fault. Like I mention above with Aero enabled, there are things we can do to better battery life. Like disabling Bluetooth, wifi if we're hardwired, taking the battery out if hardwired and especially when gaming. This also holds true to using the laptop or device somewhere hot. Nothing will kill a battery (or computing device) faster than if it can't breathe. We see a lot of dead motherboards, power adapters, etc. Because someone wanted to use their laptop on their bed for a few hours a day with all the vents closed up. Let that thing breathe!
Here's the article that got me thinking about this: http://lifehacker.com/5609988/a-comprehensive-guide-to-improving-your-android-battery-life
Don't forget to completely discharge and then fully charge your battery every so often either (called - "conditioning").
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-Nate
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