Ever since the age of the Sony Walkman, I’ve been fascinated by people interacting with portable technology in public.
These devices provided a private activity for the user yet created a public behavior in the way he or she engaged in that activity.
Only the wearer of the Walkman could hear the music, but everyone could see the listener bobbing his head up and down or lip-synching to a song.
In the age of the smartphone, this dichotomy has gotten richer.
From the lost tourist walking with his head down in his mapping application to the person laughing out loud at a viral video in a cafe, the smartphone has created a whole new personal/public behavioral shift.
The more our phones can do, the more they affect our behavior.
But sometimes, they don’t have to do anything to have an impact. They just have to be there.
I’m speaking specifically about how they’re growing in size.
Yes, mobile phones keep growing larger, and they are changing how we carry and interact with them.
Yesterday, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) announced the iPhone 6 Plus, an iPhone with a 5.5″ screen. It’s the biggest iPhone yet.
In 2011, Samsung’s first Galaxy Note smartphone shocked the public at its sheer size. At 5.3″ across, it made other smartphones look tiny.
Clearly, smartphone consumers have warmed up to the idea of a bigger phone, as even the svelte iPhone now comes in the pocket-stretching 5″ range.
Just a week prior, China’s leading device maker Huawei debuted the Mate 7, a smartphone with a 6.1″ screen.
Grander Accommodations
Smartphones at their most basic are made of just four things: wireless radios, processors, sensors, and a screen.
Everything can be independently resized without changing the shape and size of the phone — everything except the screen.
The size of the screen now dictates the size of the phone, and the size of the phone dictates the size of the battery.
The size of the battery thusly dictates how long we can go before having to plug back in and recharge.
If you’ve been in an airport in the last decade, you should be well familiar with the interesting behavior associated with public phone charging. Nowhere is it more common to see a man in a full business suit sprawled out on the floor for access to an open outlet.
The point is, when the screen real estate improves, the size of the phone chassis increases and gives manufacturers a larger space with which to work.
It should be no surprise that Huawei’s big smartphones in the 6″ range also have the longest battery life. Under that big screen, there’s more space in which to cram that 3900 mAh battery.
Most often, you’ll find that the phones at the top end of the size chart also lead the market in battery life.
This should only be a temporary blip on your long-term investment radar, though.
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Change Coming
While all the other mobile tech components can be shrunk to tiny sizes, batteries have lagged behind. Fortunately, there’s fevered research going on in the space to bring batteries up to par with the rest of our gear.
Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, for example, published their breakthrough research in lithium-ion 3D nanostructure that would allow batteries that are only a molecule thin.
Some companies are even eschewing lithium entirely.
A California startup known as Imprint Energy has been developing flexible zinc-based batteries that can be printed out with industrial screen printers.
Last June, Imprint Energy received $6 million in series A funding to continue development of its proprietary ZincPoly battery chemistry. The funding round was led by Phoenix Venture Partners and included Flextronics Lab IX and AME Cloud Ventures.
The company says its printable zinc battery technology allows thinner, more flexible, more customizable, and — above all — cheaper batteries to produce.
Small button-cell batteries commonly found in hearing aids, watches, and film cameras are often zinc-air batteries, and rechargeable versions have been in development since the late ’90s for electric vehicles and grid storage.
The playing field is still open for the next generation of batteries, and when a victor steps up, screen size will no longer be the determining factor of our mobile device’s battery capacity.
Good Investing,
Tim Conneally
For the last seven years, Tim Conneally has covered the world of mobile and wireless technology, enterprise software, network hardware, and next generation consumer technology. Tim has previously written for long-running software news outlet Betanews and for financial media powerhouse Forbes.
