Of all the advances that we’re seeing in the mobile space, with higher-resolution displays and ever faster processors, there is always one thing holding it all back – battery life. The span of our batteries hasn’t gotten any better and in a lot of cases, it’s actually gotten worse. While it’s easier than ever for manufacturers to squeeze in larger batteries they often don’t or miss out optimization altogether, leaving us with the same lackluster battery life we’ve been suffering through for some time. There’s a whole market of portable chargers out there and more ways to bring some extra power with you on the go than you can shake a stick at. All of that’s great and it’s good that we can do that but, is that really the best solution? Often times we need to get some more juice into our devices when we’re far away from a power outlet but these just create yet another device that we need to keep charged to get any real use out of it.
One of the more interesting things to come out of this year’s CES is technology from a company called Nectar that want us to forget portable batteries and have fuel cells charging our mobile gadgets. The device is more of a portable generator than just another battery and takes one Nectar Pod to generate 50, 000 Miliwatts of power. The Pod relies on butane fuel and silicon chip technology that will allow you to recharge a typical smartphone 10 to 14 times and most tablets 2 to 3 times. There’s no need to recharge the Nectar pod and if you were to recharge your smartphone fully once a day it’d last two weeks but it would more than likely last longer than that depending on your usage. Once the pod is depleted you just have to take it to a specialized electronics recyclist and buy another pod.
This sort of thing is definitely one of the best ways in which to keep your smartphones and tablets charged and ready to go wherever you are. Having said that, having to replace the pod after two weeks is certainly not ideal but it might be a better solution to having to charge a portable battery every time you deplete it. It’s not going to be cheap with the main system costing $300 however, each pod cost just $10.
[Source: PCWorld]