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Li-ion

Six things to know about smartphone batteries

Editors' note: This is a guest post. See Noam Kedem's bio at the bottom.

The smartphone market revolves around one question: how do you fit all-day access to all of a consumer's favorite applications and services comfortably into one hand? (The tablet market? Two hands.) The rest is commentary.

No smartphone manufacturer has managed to answer the question fully, because they all face a fundamental dilemma. The electronics that enable faster performance, higher-speed data, better video and gaming, a more vivid and detailed screen, are moving at the speed of Moore's Law. The lithium ion (Li-ion) pouch … Read more

Stanford researchers invent transparent li ion battery

Like the idea of a fully transparent cell phone, e-reader, or other device?

Stanford University graduate student Yuan Yang has come up with a way to make a see-through lithium ion battery, and it could pave the way for completely see-through flexible electronics (some partially transparent gadgets already exist). Developed in conjunction with Yi Cui, a professor of photon science at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the battery would cost nearly the same as a regular battery if produced on a mass scale, the creators say.

So how does one make a see-through power source? According to Stanford News, "Yang and Cui devised a mesh-like framework for the battery electrodes, with each 'line' in the grid being approximately 35 microns wide. Light passes through the transparent gaps between the gridlines; because the individual lines are so thin, the entire meshwork area appears transparent." … Read more

2012 Honda Civic hybrid gets li-ion battery, Si gets more torque

When we got our first look at the next generation of the Honda Civic at the 2011 Detroit auto show, we were generally underwhelmed. The Civic Concept resembled the outgoing Civic so closely that it was easily overshadowed by more visually interesting reveals, such as the Hyundai Veloster. Today, with the unveiling of the production versions of what will be the 2012 Civic coupe and sedan, we're unsurprised to find that Honda's bread-and-butter model is just as visually underwhelming as when we last saw it. However, digging into the specs, we find that there are a few revisions … Read more