SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A British technology company has claimed a major smartphone breakthrough by developing an iPhone that can go a week without recharging, running instead off a built-in hydrogen fuel cell.
Intelligent Energy has made a working iPhone 6 prototype containing both a rechargeable battery and its own patented technology, which creates electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen, producing only small amounts of water and heat as waste.
The company is believed to be working closely with Apple. In what it claims is a world first, it has incorporated a fuel cell system into the current iPhone 6 without any alteration to the size or shape of the device. The only cosmetic differences compared with other handsets are rear vents so an imperceptible amount of water vapour can escape.
The plan is to offer the fuel cells as disposable cartridges.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @03:18PM
I don't know enough about fuel cells to know how often/fast you can switch between shutdown and full power, but presumably that's why it has both a rechargable battery and a fuel cell -- the fuel cell only comes on when the battery's low, then charges it at constant power, then shuts off. You can't fully charge a Li-ion at constant power (you need a constant-voltage, decreasing-current phase at the end) but you can get 80% or so, good enough.