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Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by seanp2k2 on Thursday March 02, 2017 @07:44PM (#13779827)
I think that in many cases, smaller but heavier with more power is a good trade-off. Think cell phones, cameras, bike lights, camping lights, laptops, etc. while lightweight is a feature for all of these, they're also useless without a charge, so IMO the battery life and size together are more important than weight as long as it's still reasonable. Glass isn't light at all, yet they use that a ton in phones. The iPhone 6S Plus is really heavy and I haven't heard anyone complain about it. The efforts around consumer electronics I've seen in the past 20 years have mainly been about reducing size, with reducing weight as a nice typical side-effect.

This would be really great if it ever hits production, but given past battery progress vs what's actually available, I'm not holding my breath.

Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by danudey on Thursday March 02, 2017 @10:28PM (#13780533)
> The iPhone 6S Plus is really heavy and I haven't heard anyone complain about it

A significant amount of that weight is the battery, so making the battery 2.5x heavier would make the phone substantially heavier, even with the same overall charge. You'd be hard pressed to sell someone on 'This new phone we made is great, you get the same battery life as before but it weighs 40% more!'

I suppose the question is, in which cases would people be willing to accept a lower charge capacity if their phone could charge to full in, say, minutes rather than hours? I feel as though those USB battery packs that are everywhere these days would be a great candidate; plug it into the wall for a few minutes and you're fully charged, and you can charge anything else from there.

Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by jon_richards on Friday March 03, 2017 @12:08AM (#13780890)
>You'd be hard pressed to sell someone on 'This new phone we made is great, you get the same battery life as before but it weighs 40% more!'

It's actually super easy, you just say things like "solid construction", "substantial", and "build quality".

Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by rangibaby on Friday March 03, 2017 @01:51AM (#13781199)
> It's actually super easy, you just say things like "solid construction", "substantial", and "build quality".

"Beats By Dre headphones teardown finds metal parts included just to add weight"

Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by Findy3ti on Friday March 03, 2017 @09:04AM (#13782865)
I know of a hardware manufacture who used to put concrete into their DVD players to give them that quality heavy feel
Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by marcusjt on Friday March 03, 2017 @10:21AM (#13783403)
Are you sure that wasn't to dampen vibrations which might affect (or even themselves be caused by) spinning the disk and movements of the read head? (Same reason there's concrete blocks in the base of a washing machine)
Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by 2muchcoffeeman on Friday March 03, 2017 @01:35AM (#13781149)
The iPhone 4 with the steel frame was great.
Re:94-year-old Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor Introduces Solid... by QML on Friday March 03, 2017 @10:44AM (#13783596)
IMO, the current iPhone is too light. Without any weight I feel like it might slip out of my hand or I might accidentally throw it.