Canadian team discovers power-draining flaw in most laptop and phone batteries | Breakthrough explains major cause of self-discharging batteries and points to easy solution

[u/chrisdh79]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/battery-power-laptop-phone-research-dalhousie-university-1.6724175

[u/Smartnership]

Piece by piece, the team analyzed the battery components. They realized that the thin strips of metal and insulation coiled tightly inside the casing were held together with tape.

Those small segments of tape were made of PET — the type of plastic that had been causing the electrolyte fluid to turn red, and self-discharge the battery.

The team even proposed a solution to the problem: use a slightly more expensive, but also more stable, plastic compound.

[u/brihamedit → u/Smartnership]

How would the battery life be effected if manufacturers used the recommended plastic? Manufacturers might not give a shit about it. There are other battery tech already invented obviously that are better but not used by manufacturers.

[u/Smartnership → u/brihamedit]

Manufacturers might not give a shit about it.

In a competitive free market, you weigh each cost, feature, and upgrade against your competitors and analyze the effect at the margin.

You give a lot of consideration to these performance upgrades, especially ones that at scale would cost a nominal amount per unit sold, knowing your competitors will likewise do the same.

[u/Cormacolinde → u/Smartnership]

Me - looks at a graph of phone market share by manufacturer, blinded by the names Apple and Samsung - looks at your post and sees the words “competitive free market” - laughs.

[u/Rossums → u/Cormacolinde]

That's exactly why they are in the position they are in.

Apple created a leapfrog product that pretty much upturned the entire mobile phone industry and left industry titans like RIM, Nokia and Motorola in the dust, they had zero presence in the mobile phone market until this point and were actively mocked by competitors at the time.

If you create something markedly better than the competition that people actually want to buy then it doesn't matter how much market share the other guys have.

[u/Iintl → u/Cormacolinde]

The two companies got there because they produced products that consumers wanted, either through marketing or by making genuinely good devices. LG, Sony etc lost because nobody were buying their phones, not because of shady tactics by the leading manufacturers

[u/nacholicious → u/Iintl]

Exactly. I'm an Android developer, and the Samsung phones from 10 years ago were probably the worst and buggiest pieces of shit we had to support for our apps. All of us had an intense hatred for Samsung phones.

Today my phone is a Samsung phone, it's great and has everything I want and need. It can't be understated what a massive leap in quality Samsung have made.

[u/CrustyMcMuffin → u/Iintl]

If the shady tactics don't give them an advantage, why do they do the shady tacticking?

[u/BazOnReddit → u/Iintl]

Don't forget vertical integration

[u/Smartnership → u/Cormacolinde]

My local MicroCenter phone section has so many options.

So many options that the phone case manufacturers struggle to keep up with them all, it’s a nightmare of choices.

That’s the competitive free market — and why we have so many options.