Remember when light bulbs used to last decades? A phone battery that lasts that long is incompatible with capitalism.
A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years
Submitted 10 months ago by 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
a1studmuffin@aussie.zone 10 months ago
mipadaitu@lemmy.world 10 months ago
When they were really dim and far too red like 80 years ago? Or when they switched to LED and actually lasted a decade, like now?
Batteries that last a decade will open up the opportunity for expensive tech like we never imagined.
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Or when they switched to LED and actually lasted a decade, like now?
Don’t know about you, but LEDs with Edison screws on them don’t last that long. Maybe Siemens or some other brand name manufacturer, but the cheap Chinese ones last only a few months.
It’s the heat buildup that’s the problem. Disassemble them, slap a CPU heatsink on it and yes, they will last forever.
a1studmuffin@aussie.zone 10 months ago
Here’s what I was referring to with the lightbulb thing and capitalism:
CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 10 months ago
The original Edison bulb still works iirc
nudnyekscentryk@szmer.info 10 months ago
The battery is not the point of failure in contemporary phones, this new radioactive battery doesn’t change much
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 10 months ago
Sensationalized clickbait.
100 microwatts, aiming for 1W in 2025. That’s a big difference and 1W is still not enough for a cell phone. Phone-scale batteries aren’t even on the roadmap.
fidodo@lemmy.world 10 months ago
1 Watt is plenty to power a phone on average. While idle a phone uses less than 1 Watt. The thing is, nuclear batteries are a misnomer, they’re actual electrical generators. For this to work in a phone, you’d want to pair it with an actual battery, and the generator would charge the battery while the phone is idle and that would provide enough power on average for when you’re actively using your phone.
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
My idea exactly. Unless it can output at least double of what the phone’s max drain is, there is no other way.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 10 months ago
1W is enough for a cell phone, if you combined it with a capacitor for brief bursts at higher watts.
fuck_u_spez_in_particular@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Now play a game for an hour…
Lojcs@lemm.ee 10 months ago
My phone uses 0.6W when idle and 1.2-2.5W while I’m using it. Peaks are 8W+. No way an internal reactor only can power a phone.
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
You could do it with a parallelized output from a bunch of them.
Tja@programming.dev 10 months ago
Or with a diesel generator in a wheelbarrow
squid_slime@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Looking for to a mini reactor being directly next to my balls
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 10 months ago
“Just getting a little cancer, Stan.”
KlavKalashj@lemmy.world 10 months ago
BUFFALO SOLLDYA
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
It’s not that radioactive and Nikel 63 decays to copper, so there is no radioactive waste being produced when the battery is depleted.
RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Oh, good. So whenever some fool tosses a phone out of a car to get crushed on the roadway, shoots one because TikTok, or otherwise mangles a phone, we now have a potential for radioactive material to be spread around?
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
No, read the article. It’s Nikel 63 and the decay is copper. It’s contained in a metal seal.
jjagaimo@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
And Nickel 63 is… radioactive material
remotelove@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
It’s a variation of the same scam: youtu.be/5M5MF6KE-jY?si=7odXF_9q2SkumX7X
Juviz@feddit.de 10 months ago
Some of the first pacemakers used radioactive batteries. We left that concept pretty fast. And that is considering you have to cut your patient open to change a pacemaker battery. This will not happen in commercial cellphones
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I think so as well.
But, it would be nice if it could be applied to vehicles.
ManuLeMaboul@lemmy.world 10 months ago
It outputs 0.1 milliwatts, can’t even power a single LED.
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
The size is smaller than a coin. Put enough of them in parallel and they’ll output enough power.
froh42@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Yeah 5000 of them to get the 500 mW a smartphone needs in standby mode.
It is the article that mentioned smart phones which is bullshit. This is a (probably expensive) battery specialized for extremely low power devices which need to run for many years. It will never be something that powers your phone.
The tech is really cool and there’s applications for such a battery - just not phones.
ReverendIrreverence@lemmy.world 10 months ago
I don’t need 50 years but 50 days (before recharging) would be cool
WallEx@feddit.de 10 months ago
Fallout universe timeline, here we come!
mumblerfish@lemmy.world 10 months ago
100 microwatts? What does a phone use, like 1W? So they are 4 orders of magnitude off? So phones need to become 10,000 times more efficient or the battery that much bigger?
JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Betavolt is planning to boost its tech to produce a 1-watt battery by 2025. And while it still has some way to go, the company seems confident stating development is way ahead of European and American scientific research institutions and enterprises.
RemindMe! 1 year repeat
Gladaed@feddit.de 10 months ago
This is physically implausible. Also self proclaimed advances without 3rd party proof are less than worthless.
exscape@kbin.social 10 months ago
This again? It's utter bullcrap I'm afraid.
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Others pointed this out as well. It seems it is a scam, but it might become a viable solution in the not so distant future (10 years or so from now).
account_93@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Perfect, my phone will outlast me
the_seven_sins@feddit.de 10 months ago
Depending on how radioactive the battery in your pocket is, that’s not hard.
Gork@lemm.ee 10 months ago
50 Ci? That’s a helluva lot of activity.
cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 10 months ago
And that’s for a battery that only produces 100 microwatts. A battery that produces 10000 times more power will be a lot spicier.
nicetriangle@kbin.social 10 months ago
These tech articles on some new advancement are basically the same phenomenon of bullshit as articles ending in a question mark. The answer is always "nah"
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 10 months ago
That could is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that headline.
Also, we can barely get OEMs to support phones for 5 years now...
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
I’d say, 10 years is more than enough, the device is practically unusable after that, even if it’s still working.
Pons_Aelius@kbin.social 10 months ago
Not if you can change the battery...
I am having to retire my 7 year old S5, which still works perfectly, because 3G networks are being switched off in a couple of months.
elshandra@lemmy.world 10 months ago
If this was an economically scalable proven thing today, phones wouldn’t be sold with batteries in 5 years.
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
It is doable, but it’s not practical. Technology moves so fast nowadays, a 10 year old i7 is easilly surpassed by a modern day i3.
Don’t get me wrong, I use old tech all the time, but it’s becoming increasingly impractical to do so.
Noerttipertti@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
Not all phones are smartphones. Theres still plenty of use cases for call/sms only phones.
0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 10 months ago
Amd they don’t support anything higher than 3G, which will go in history in a few years… and then the only thing you can use them for is a paper weight.