Imagine using your phone for up to five days on a single charge

Both enthusiasts and casual smartphone shoppers like to buy phones that feature good battery life. That makes sense; no matter how well spec'd a phone is, if it runs out of juice and you don't own a power bank or can't find an outlet, you might as well have a brick in your hands. And you don't have to be an expert to figure out that the 5000mAh battery on the Moto G7 Power has a higher capacity than the 2800mAh battery found inside the Pixel 4.
According to ScienceAdvances, researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia have used lithium-sulfur technology to develop a smartphone battery that can go up to five days between charges. Imagine how convenient that would be. To make this work, the research team was able to fix one of the biggest problems found in li-s batteries, the loss of active battery material over time.
Imagine a smartphone battery giving you five days between charges
Unlike some of the past battery breakthroughs where development has seemed to have stopped dead in its tracks, lithium-sulfur has caught the attention of some Chinese and European lithium battery manufacturers. Further testing is scheduled to take place in Australia earlier this year. Associate Professor Matthew Hill says that the latest design of the battery not only offers outstanding performance but is also cheaper to manufacture. Speaking of manufacturing, the scientists' have received a patent in Australia for the process and a prototype was developed by Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology.
Battery life seems to move gradually higher on average every year, which most users are happy to see. Sometimes though, the technology isn't exactly ready for prime time. Take the sad story of the Energizer Power Max P18K Pop. Unveiled last February in Barcelona during MWC, this device was equipped with an 18000mAh capacity battery, the largest ever put inside a smartphone. The manufacturer building the phone, Avenir Telecom, listed it on crowdfunding site Indiegogo seeking to raise $1.2 million. To achieve the goal, close to 2,200 units would have to be sold at a price of $549 each. But the amount raised was a disappointing $15,005 from 11 backers and the project was canceled.
While having an 18000mAh battery gave the Energizer Power Max P18K Pop unmatched battery life, it also made the device extremely thick making it stand out (and not in a good way) among smartphones that are increasingly becoming more svelte.
Before we see lithium-sulfur batteries powering smartphones, graphene batteries could be next. Batteries made with this material could offer faster recharge times with a smaller physical presence. Huawei France disseminated a tweet last month discussing the use of a graphene battery for the Huawei P40 Pro. Tipster Ice Universe (@UniverseIce) pointed out that the technology is "currently impossible" and of course, Huawei France removed the post.