That’s what MIT and Samsung are together aiming for. No, you would not recharge your iPad once and be done with it forever. But if MIT and Samsung succeed, your tablet or phone wouldn’t retain less and less juice as it aged. You’d always get a full charge.
Good news for cash-strapped students, ultimately? Buy a used tablet or cell phone. Read a Russian novel without worrying so much about the battery dying on you, when you’re simultaneously camping and cramming?
UberGizmo warns not to expect such miracles immediately in consumer products, but they could materialize in the “near future.”
So how can the magic happen?
This is done by replacing the existing liquid substance found inside most batteries with a solid material instead. Apparently this will allow a battery to hold its charge for pretty much forever. The new batteries are also expected to be more resistant to temperature and external factors, meaning that the days of worrying about your phone exploding next to your face should be gone (hopefully).
Image credit: Allegoria dell’immortalità, by Giulio Romano.
