- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- hackernews@derp.foo
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- hackernews@derp.foo
A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years::A glowing horizon for phones
A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years::A glowing horizon for phones
The issue is not the radioactivity, it’s the power density. Per the article, this is ~24x smaller than an average phone battery, but can supply only 100uW.
I have a relatively conservative phone use, and on average, my phone uses 450mW. That means that you’d need 4500 of those batteries in your phone. But the battery would also need to cover the power usage peaks, which are multiple times higher than the average power consumption.
The obvious hand-wave is to charge a capacitor and power the phone from that.
Even if it’d have to be a glorified Game Boy to fit that average power budget. You could do it. There’s Cortex M0s that’ll go on standby down to the nanoamps. At that point you’re running on the idea of electricity. You could power that circuit with an intense stare. They’re still up in the low mA for doing anything, but what they’ll do there is plenty for Snake.
Yes, but we’re talking about mobile phones. The lowest power consumption GSM modules I know of still require ~10mW on the lowest power setting. And that’s just for calls and sms, forget background tasks like messaging apps or social media.