Longer-lasting battery technology is here, but iPhone owners will have to wait

As I mentioned a few days ago, breakthroughs in battery technology always seem to be two years away, but there have been some small but interesting developments.

One of these, silicon-carbon batteries, is already present in some Android brands, and battery test results clearly illustrate the benefits. But experts say it will still be a while before Apple adopts the new battery chemistry in future iPhones…

There is an ongoing arms race between battery capacities and smartphone features. Batteries have become more efficient over the years, but at the same time, those gains have been eaten up by the growing power demands of bigger, brighter screens, more powerful processors, and more.

Although most improvements in battery technology have been incremental, some of the latest Android phones have moved to new battery chemistry that demonstrates a step change in capacity. CNET notes that Chinese brands like Honor, Huawei and Oppo are switching from lithium-ion batteries to silicon-carbon batteries, which offer significantly higher energy density and faster charging.

Silicon-carbon batteries are not an entirely new type of battery, but rather a next-generation version of lithium-ion technology. Simply put, instead of using graphite in the battery anode, manufacturers integrate a silicon-carbon composite. Since silicon can contain more lithium than graphite, this design allows for higher energy density (…) In CNET’s lab tests, nearly half of the phones with the best battery life use silicon-carbon technology.

The technology hasn’t yet been adopted by Apple, Samsung or Google, and experts say that’s because it’s too new to have the proven reliability demanded by big brands.

Advances must be validated on millions of units to avoid unexpected failures, safety issues and large-scale performance issues, says Paul Braun, director of the Materials Research Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Reliability and longevity are more important in high-end smartphones that people keep longer, and that’s why it may be a year or three before we see silicon-carbon batteries powering iPhones.

Image: iFixit