New smartphone battery recharges in less than two minutes

Sunday, 11. January 2015 - 16:22

Your next smartphone could charge in less than two minutes. Since first showing off the lab-based prototype of its ultra-fast battery charger, the company behind the device has moved much closer to making it a reality.

StoreDot, the nanotech startup behind the charger, has a new prototype that is smaller and doesn't add bulk to the actual smartphone. During Mashable's demo, the Galaxy S5 battery went from almost empty to 100% in less than two minutes.

It almost sounds too good to be true but StoreDot CEO Doron Myersdorf says it's because the company took a completely different approach when creating its battery. Rather than trying to improve the capacity of the battery itself, the company redesigned the internal structure of the battery so it can charge rapidly. The tradeoff for this speed is the overall battery life is shorter— the battery I saw will last about five hours.

But by cutting charging time down to a minute or two— Mysersdorf says the final product will have a recharge time of well under two minutes— recharging once or twice a day is a nonissue.

"This is not trivial, it took us a lot of research," Mysersdorf said. "This is a design that is trying to achieve something that was not the goal before. Nobody thought about giving you less energy ,everybody thought about giving you more energy."

There are some caveats. The battery is more expensive than typical batteries and Myersdorf anticipates the battery will add about $50 to the total cost of a phone. And though StoreDot has made prototypes that work with handsets currently on the market, smartphone manufacturers will have to make "some modifications" to their devices in order to accommodate the battery. This means it will be up to individual companies to take advantage of the technology.

But on that front, Myersdorf is optimistic. The company is already in early talks with "all the big guys"— the CEO said they have already had more than a dozen meetings with potential partners during CES— and the current goal is to have the batteries in the hands of consumers by 2017 the current goal is to have the batteries in the hands of consumers by 2017.

But the company's vision goes well beyond smartphones. Myersdorf sees a future where all battery-powered devices are use these types of batteries and see electric vehicles as the next big opportunity for the company.

StoreDot starting an an electric vehicles initiative with the goal of creating batteries for cars like Teslas that will recharge in lminutes rather than hours. Myersdorf said a prototype that will recharge a Tesla's battery in three minutes should be ready in about year.

"This a mindset shift," he said. "Everything can be charged faster."