MIT Startup SolidEnergy Aims to Double Your Battery Life This Year

We have all been there. One moment your smartphone is showing a full battery charge and after a couple of hours it approaches dangerously low levels. We got Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp and other apps running 24/7 on our phones and then we have games like Kingdom Rush, Badlands, Dead Trigger and Threes amongst many others that drain battery life!

Our smartphones are getting crazy powerful and that means they require more juice to keep chugging along.

Enter SolidEnergy and their solution to a long-running battery life issue

An MIT-based startup, SolidEnergy is promising at least double the battery life with its new technology. Current lithium-ion batteries are what they are comparing their new tech with.

First a little bit of technical information about li-ion batteries. These batteries rely on graphite-based anodes for dispersing positive electric charge. These anodes, due to their physical characteristics, hold a limited amount of charge. In numbers, lithium-ion has an energy density of less than 600watts-hour per liter.

Energy is looking to replace the current-graphite based anode with an ultra-thin metal anode that gives 1,200 wH/L. IN theory that’s double the charge from current LI-Ion batteries. The ultra-thin anode is made from a thin piece of lithium on copper. And whats more, it’s one-fifth the size of a graphite anode, meaning that not only does it hold 2x the charge, but it does by occupying less physical space.

We hear about a lot about new battery tech but what makes SolidEnergy different is that they will launch a product in 2015

In theory our future smartphones that come with SolidEnergy’s batteries will have significantly tiny batteries, thanks to a shrunken battery compartment. Imagine how much lighter our phones will be. Imagine how many more features manufacturers can cram in their phones now that they have more space to design their phones.

SolidEnergy’s tech will be demonstrated in Google’s modular phones (Project Ara). This makes sense as these modular phones will have tiny and replaceable components that can be switched out. According to SolidEnergy’s founder and current CEO Dr. Qichao Hu, his battery tech sounds practical and custom-tailored for Google’s unique take on smartphones.

SolidEnergy batteries will feature in Google’s Project Ara

Google was trying to figure out the short battery life on its Project Ara prototypes and SolidEnergy’s battery tech can adequately power all manner of different components that modular smartphones will possess.

If all goes well, we will be seeing SolidEnergy’s battery in 2015. Dr, Hu has mentioned that many smartphone manufacturers have also approached him for the technology. We might not have to wait too long to find out the results.

Samir is the Head of Entertainment at Lens by ProPakistani. You can reach out to him at samir.ya...


  • If it is. It will be a revolutionary change and battery life may be extended upto a week


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