The billion dollar race to fix phone batteries

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Lithium-Ion batteries were commercialized in the 1990s by Sony, and since then, very little has changed in the battery market. Capacity increases are slow and incremental, and only fast charging is improving at quick rates. Let's take a look at why.

The Story Behind - ep. 86

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[TechAltar]

We have 2 bonus videos with ~40 minutes of extra content this time:

The Nebula / CuriosityStream bundle is no longer active. Instead, you can sign up for Nebula directly with my discount now for about $2.5 a month with a yearly plan, which includes Nebula Originals AND the whole Nebula Classes platform, too, including my own class.

[myrandomusername]

I have a drawer full of old phones I can't use due to their dead batteries... You could say they're free of charge.

[btfilther]

I am honestly OK with the battery charge density as of now, but I think that the near term goal is to make them last at least twice as longer in terms of charging cycles. I am ok with charging my phone every day, but I am not ok with the battery degradation.

[jbq]

I am a battery engineer, and I have to say that this was very well researched. With phone batteries in particular, they rely very heavily on cobalt because they are almost exclusively LCO-based chemistry. Compared with cars which are typically NMC, NCA, or more recently LFP as you mentioned.

[MohamedSalahYouTube]

My main problem with lithium ion batteries Is their health declining over time
Battery health degradation honestly gives me anxiety

[miiiikku]

When we look at Moores law of doubling number of transistors on chip every two years, we might feel tempted to think similar development is possible in other technologies, but its not.

[francescogiuseppearagona]

As a chemist (who is also interested in electronics) i have something to point out:
- Not only sodium is heavier than lithium, but it also have a slightly lower (well actually higher, because it's a negative value) redox potential (talking about the Na / Na+ couple), and even more importantly it has a larger radius, which make it difficoult to intercalate it in a crystalline stucture, such as graphite (Na also forms dendrites when crystallizing). Na is also much more reactive than Li, exploding in contact with water instead of "just burning", but at least it doesn't burn in N2...
- EVs are the devices which benefit the most from Li-ion tech: since they have to carry around the battery, the lighter this is the less energy you waste in carrying it around. Using a less energy dense battery type on EVs is ideally wrong. For stationary devices, on the other hand, weight is not an issue.
- Silicon doesn't have any energy storage power, because it's not involved in the redox cycle. The sole responsible for energy storage in Li-ion batteries is lithium, and this is why you would want to use pure lithium as your anode, instead of using lithium ions intercalated in graphite / silicon. Unfortunately this is impossible, because of lithium's tendency to form dendrites, which then short the battery, triggering an explosion. This is ultimately due to lithium's crystalline structure (which cannot be changed).
- Solid state batteries were thought to be a way to prevent dendrites formation, hence to use pure lithium as an anode, eliminating the need for an intercalating material (such as graphite / graphene or silicon), thus increasing energy density. However, solid electrolites looks to be ineffective to limit the formation of dendrites.
- Making batteries more energy dense would be extremely dangerous: since batteries contain a full redox system they are essentially a fuel which already contain the oxidizer to burn it. In other words they're a lot like gunpowder, or thermite (which is the best analogy, due to its metallic nature). The fact that Li has the lowest (-3.07 V for Li / Li+ couple) redox potential of the entire periodic table doesn't help: it basically means it can burn in everything using everything as an oxidizer (apart from noble gases). It's also one of the two known metals (the other one being magnesium) capable of burning in a pure nitrogen atmosphere. This is why Li ion batteries are considered a dangerous good and can't be shipped on airplanes.

In synthesis, Li ion battery technology has reached its full potential speaking of energy density. We have kinda reached the end of Moore's Law for batteries. If an improvement to battery life can be made, this will come from software optimization, SOCs specifically designed for mobiles (such as Apple A series), new manifacturing process nodes and more efficient displays.

[cgerman]

Perhaps the most significant problem is that batteries actually degrade, which means that their capacity slowly becomes smaller and smaller. Which means after a certain amount time you will need to replace it.

[TheGoukaruma]

They could also try to reduce the power that the phone needs. New displays or low energy CPUs could help to make the battery last longer.

[SYNDESTV]

Great video! Hope developers can focus on making computing more energy efficient since battery capacity has hit a plateau

[willmather]

I think for mobile tech the other side of the equation might be as important as battery tech. Apple virtually doubled battery life in their MacBook range by switching from Intel to Apple Silicon. I think a shifted emphasis to efficiency across the market is pretty important. Obviously there's less room to squeeze in the smartphone market where efficiency has been a much bigger factor already but I expect there's still some room to move in that space. At the moment we seem to be getting bigger and bigger phones with hungrier processors and bigger batteries for steadily diminishing returns.

[TheStigma]

As far as phones go, I've never understood why they don't just make them like 30% thicker. That should allow for maybe a doubling of battery size, and if it wasn't for this "form over function" obsession with getting ever slimmer electronics, it would be hard to even notice the difference. I would take double battery life in exchange for a few extra mm thickness any day.

It's a much worse problem in other devices where you can't so easily just expand the battery - like a smartwatch for example. And this is why I think we are heading for a potential disaster with the rate at which we are carelessly using lithium/cobalt and those other very limited materials to power everything. For wearables we really have no other good options right now due to the density and weight needs - but it is a terrible idea to use lithium-battery tech for large-scale grid storage for example. We will already struggle to make all the lithium batteries we need for EVs (where weight is also crucial). Let's not waste these precious resources for static batteries too where size and weight is much less of a factor.

The unfortunate reality is that very few people with real power over how the market develops care about sustainability. It's all powered by shortsighted greed. if there is profits to be made right now and lithium is marginally better suited right now, then they will use it even in cases where it's arguably not needed. Even if it will end up making the tech prohibitively expensive for later generations.
Sure - we may have managed to create better alternative batteries at a reasonable cost before we hit the brick wall on this, but that's not guaranteed by any means - and it is very irresponsible to just assume that science will save us out of every pinch like this.

[drac]

The least improved part of a smartphone is resistance. You used to buy a phone and that's it. Use it. Now you have to buy a screen cover, a phone cover. Phones used to drop on the floor and one piece got to each side of the room, you put them together and done. Now it scratches, breaks, etc. We are now using expensive fragile bricks made of glass rather than a decent piece of hardware that can stand day to day use.

[mscbijles]

Potentially, there might be better charge carriers than lithium in the guises of beryllium and boron. Both elements are only slightly heavier than lithium, but carry more charge (electrons to give away) than lithium. Potentials issues though are availability of the element and how willing they are to give their electrons away in the battery.

[anubhavforall]

The consistency !!!
As usual, a well explained video. 🙂

[haldyrs.telvanni]

Well having an option to replace just the battery in my phone would be another way to make it better. Even if they managed to make it last double at new, what is the point if it doesn't last a day after two years of use.

[lwwells]

“Batteries are holding progress back”…. Or focus on improving the energy efficiency of displays, processors, and antennas maybe…

[theobserver]

I think the next step is to make much more efficient chipsets rather than more powerful ones + industries research alternatives to Lithium-ion/polymer not only in phones but for other specific applications (like lithium iron phosphate for drones) so the demand for components for lithium-ion/polymer is reduced

[thcoura]

Something that is needed to included and considered is that the modern SOCs got incredibly smart with Power management. Drop voltage, control clock speed and activity, cut power of features that are not in use and the list goes on

[hsuyang]

Would love to see some statistics on the median and variance of battery life :)