Report: Don't expect smartphone battery life to get any better soon

Don't expect battery life on smartphones to improve any time soon, says a new report from IMS Research.

The firm said that the gap between the power demands of smartphones and the battery capacity available to those devices is only going to widen during the next several years. This will put handset makers in a bind, since they are trying to meet the feature demands of end users by cramming more power-draining features into smartphones. Increasing power consumption is being driven by both mobile data applications and the kinds of features on the latest phones, from faster processors to more vivid displays, the firm said.

"Even with a 1500 mAh battery, which is the high water mark in the industry at the moment, our estimates show many smartphone users only have a battery life of six hours," IMS Research analyst Chris Schreck said in a release. And many analysts agree that there will not be a major breakthrough in battery technology soon.

However, there are a number of potential technologies that could ease the problem, including multi-core processing to turn off certain features when they are not being used, fuel cell technology and even kinetic energy that could generate, convert and store power for mobile phones.  

For more:
- see this release

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