Friday, January 4, 2013 - 3:45pm
When the apocalypse comes, you'll be scrambling to power all your flashlights for zombie deterrence, and this clever model from Panasonic makes it easy.
Batteries stories
Friday, November 2, 2012 - 5:58pm
It's been like 30 seconds since we posted about some new trick that'll make batteries less terrible, so it's high time for some updates: researchers at Rice University have found that stuffing piles of crushed silicon into lithium-ion batteries can increase their capacity by a factor of three, but the real news here is that it's both easy to do, and cheap.
Sunday, October 21, 2012 - 12:20pm
Lithium, the element that is often used as a medication to battle bi-polar disorder and to power most laptop and phone batteries, is not the most ubiquitous element on the planet. Hence the price of our batteries. Japanese researchers, though, may have discovered a way to use sugar to power batteries.
Thursday, September 20, 2012 - 1:02pm
Here's an absolutely brilliant idea from Apple: imagine if you had a bunch of different gadgets, and imagine if they could all somehow be powered by batteries that were rechargeable and all interchangeable with one another. How awesome would that be? Super awesome! If only we'd thought of it a long time ago.
Monday, September 3, 2012 - 1:33pm
Berlin, Germany — If Tom Hanks really had crashed on that deserted island, the odds are really good that many of those FedEx boxes would have contained some gadgets. But those found gadgets would have been as useless as Wilson without this handy Eton Boost Turbine Charger.
Friday, August 31, 2012 - 11:55am
There are two necessary evils that we despise about gadgets: the need for batteries, and the need for cables. LG Chem has now come up with a way to combine both cables and batteries into one thing (a "batterble," if you will) that's a full 50% less evil. It's not quite good, but it's way better than what we've got now.
Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 4:33pm
Ah yes, another amazing battery technology guaranteed to make everything from electric cars to cell phones charge instantly. This one comes from boffins in South Korea, who have added carbon networks to lithium-ion batteries to make them charge anywhere from 30x to 120x faster.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012 - 8:18am
External battery packs are great, except they're hindered only by how much capacity they come with. Exogear's Exovolt Plus is different — it's stackable — meaning you can pile on as many together and create a battery powerful enough to recharge even the biggest power guzzling gadgets.
Thursday, June 28, 2012 - 10:37am
Researchers at Rice University in Houston have developed a technique to deconstruct each element of the traditional battery into a liquid, which can then be literally spray-painted in layers into any shape, and onto any surface.
Tuesday, June 5, 2012 - 3:02pm
With a few exceptions, most of the battery technology that we write about isn't exactly close to making your gadgets better in the near term. This battery technology is, and it could triple battery capacity within a year.
