Apple planning massive battery life boost for iPhone 6?

The iPhone 73 will last for 12 bagillion years on a 10-minute charge
The iPhone 73 will last for 12 bagillion years on a 10-minute charge

Apple - you know the company, the one with all the silver and black expensive gadgets - is looking at the age old problem of battery performance in phones.

The new technology has been uncovered in a patent by AppleInsider, which looks at increasing the power density in batteries - essentially keeping the same volume while improving the amount of juice inside.

This is achieved using a "multi-step constant-current constant-voltage (CC-CV) charging technique", which is science-speak for 'more sparky, same size-y'.

Battery to the Future

Such steps forward are pivotal if today's smartphones are to continue on the same path of more feature rich in a thinner frame, and Apple notes that this could be used for increasing the amount of tech in the same footprint, or making the phones even teenier.

But it's not all good futuristic science news... the technology is susceptible to battery life degradation when temperatures fluctuate and if the charge in the unit is kept too high, this will also hurt the life-span of the power-pack.

We hope Apple is feverishly beavering away at this new technology, honing and polishing until it gets it just right - there's no way we'll be seeing the improvements in the next iteration of the iPhone, so does the iPhone 6 suddenly make a lot more sense?

From Phone Arena via Apple Insider

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.