Motorola announced an incredible smartphone at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year. They took a device that was already gorgeous, the RAZR, and then somehow managed to stick a 3,300 mAh battery inside it. Dubbed the RAZR Maxx, even with all that extra battery battery power it still managed to be thinner than Apple’s iPhone 4/4S. That got us thinking, when are other companies going to try to do the same thing? One month later, at Mobile World Congress, we saw Huawei announce the D Quad XL, which has a 2,500 mAh battery. Will Apple, Nokia, or Samsung come out with devices with equally massive batteries? We’ll have to wait and see, but at least one company is coming out against the idea. HTC’s Vice president of Product strategy, Björn Kilburn, said that the company had plans to use 3,000 mAh batteries in future devices, but after conducting several focus groups … they changed their minds.
What’s the point of having a smartphone if you can’t use it because you forgot to charge it overnight? These days consumers are demanding an incredible amount of functionality from their devices. They want to have a large screen, they want to have a screaming fast processor, and they want to be connected to a 4G LTE network so they never have to experience lag. All that is frighteningly taxing on batteries. Sure, companies will invent more power efficient screens, processors, and radios. There’s also a lot you can do in terms of power management software. But at the end of the day, we’re reminded of something our teachers taught us in grade school: KISS, as in Keep It Simple Stupid.
Need more battery life? Shove a bigger battery inside. Look at the new iPad for example. It has a battery that’s 70% larger than that in the iPad 2. KISS.