Gadgetory

hey guys it's joe the android guy today we're going to talk about batteries and why they're holding us back and what we can do with our smartphones and our tablets let's go take a look alright so batteries are a specification that are included really on every single cell phone and tablet that you get and just don't mean much and why is that because most of us don't understand battery technology so for example that is an old Nexus One see that it's got a 1400 milliamp hour battery in it and it runs at 1 gigahertz I think it runs at 1 gigahertz it's been so long this is a Galaxy Nexus it's a dual-core 1.2 gigahertz and it's got a 1750 milliamp hour battery in it okay so what does that mean well if you take a look at your battery you're going to see something that says how many milliamp hours it is you're also going to see something that says how many volts and how many watt hours hey the volts just kind of ignore they're pretty much standard three point seven in this case that's what our phones use to run on volts well that's electro-motive force that anyway let's not get into too much detail on electronics you can do that if you want to and if you'd like to know you know more about battery theory and electronics leave me a comment down below I can get into that detail if you want but let's keep things a little bit high level so today let's let's just suffice it to say voltage is going to remain the same three point seven volts is that one variable we're going to lock it in and leave it over there okay now we've got the other and that's the milliamp hours that is literally the capacity of the battery now what do I mean by capacity if we consider voltage to be flow which essentially it is and milliamp hours or amp hours to be capacity which it is then we can start to understand and how batteries work and where some of our challenges lie so I keep saying capacity let's picture your battery as a jug of water one gallon jug let's make things easier two liter for lead or whatever for for our metric friends but you've got this jug of water now there are a couple of things I mean it's got a predetermined amount of stuff in it right water in this case and it's got a specific flow rate you can't pour the stuff the water out of that jug any faster than the hole and the the neck of the jug will let you do it ok so that's your voltage essentially so we've got a gallon of water well how long is that gallon of water going to last if I have a lid on it and set it on a shelf it's going to last almost indefinitely oh sure you're going to have some evaporation through the plastic it's going to go bad and it's going to have a funny taste after a while but you're still going to have about a gallon of water in that even years later well in batteries it's kind of the same thing if you just set this on the shelf and leave it alone it's going to remain charged for months and months and you can come back and use it it's great if you leave it inside your phone and your phone is turned off not just screen off but entirely off it's gonna last for months and months and months hey wouldn't that be a cool spec battery life three months just don't turn it on ok maybe not so turning it on turning your phone or your tablet on is akin to drinking out of that jug of water if you are let's say it's a nice cool spring day like it is out here in utah and i'm watching the garden i'm watching the grass grow i'm watching the birds i'm not doing anything i'm just sitting down relaxing and sipping at my water it's gonna last me all day and i'm probably going to have some left over see i'm not using it much i'm not doing much now if I decide that I want to go out for a run on the island right next to me in the hot with no shade and there's a no wind coming across so I'm just sweating and sweating and sweating and I'm not cooling down well I'm going to be drinking water left and right I'm going to be going through that and I'm gonna have to stop and get refills on my water cuz I'm going to use it all up it's the same gallon of water but because I'm exerting more energy I have to drink more water by the way a gallon of water a day is kind of a good target number for you just FYI with batteries it's kind of the same way obviously you're not storing water in them you're not storing a gallon of anything in them what you're doing is you're storing energy will get to how it does that just really high level in a minute but the more you use it the more you open that jug and pour it out into a glass and drink it the faster your water is going well the more you turn on your phone and use it use your battery use your screen use your radios use your speaker all that stuff the more you use it the faster it's going to drain just like the jug of water okay we all got that let's move on okay a jug of water works by having a big empty space without holes in it obviously that you can fill up and then a lid that you put on right pretty simple when you want to get water out of it you reverse the process take off the lid pour the jug put the lid back on with a battery it's a little bit different inside of a battery you've essentially got three things you've got an anode you've got a cathode you've got an electrolyte now I'm not going to go into tons of detail unless you want me to go into tons of detail again leave comments down below suffice it to say on one side you have positive ions on one side you have negative ions with a lack of electrons so essentially you're storing all of your electrons on one side they're not on the other side and you're insulating those two with an electrolyte solution so you know if you imagine two wires that you're holding close together as long as there's a gap in between their power electricity is not going to flow between them but as soon as you get it close enough it's going to arc across make sense batteries don't really work exactly that way but it's kind of what it does so when you charge up the battery you're essentially replenishing all of those positive electron positive on is it positive or negative I can research that if you want me to know anyway you're putting the juice on one side and not on the other side and then when you need to use it you're reversing that process you're allowing the flow to go across and it's that electrolyte solution that lets the electrons travel through and power flow and whatnot now this is direct current so it's goes from one side to the other side and out and I know it's not just one side the other side there's lots of little cells in here so trying to keep battery technology simples really hard okay stick with me take a deep breath all right so we've got these batteries and anodes cathodes electrolytes and they're all crammed in there really really really tight you can't cram them much tighter because again when you put those two wires close together eventually they're going to arc when they arc that's called a short by the way it's going to let the electrons flow across and that will discharge the battery that's why you don't ever want to short your pins on the top because it'll get really hot really fast and burn stuff out and cause damage so don't do that that's what happens on the inside in fact the lithium ion batteries are famous dare I say in famous I know I pronounced that wrong but go back to the three amigos see what I mean it's a funny show but when it happens is inside inside things happen it's not just a solid piece in there and some of these batteries were built without really high Wow standards I guess they weren't high quality and there was stuff in there in between that space that kind of bridged the gap just a little bit just enough that when it got hot sure enough the electrons jumped across and it shorted it got hot and well fire and explosions and all kinds of stuff that you don't want to be happening with the cell phone in your pocket that should be all fixed now because quality standards have improved but it goes to show you that you can't cram the anodes and cathodes closer together without running into that possibility of shorting and exploding we don't want to happen so today's technology how can we get more juice in a battery when we make the battery bigger it's about it that's where our problem is we've got screens that are getting huge high-definition screens they're using up lots and lots of power they're very bright they're very pretty but they use a lot of power well the bigger the screens get we talked about this before the more processing power you have to have both cpu and GPU well the higher those run the more power they consume you also need more ram to be able to kind of cash all the stuff that's going to go into the GPU and CPU and be processed and displayed for you that takes extra power oh and guess what cram and all those in there makes it run hotter which makes your battery kind of discharge faster not cool so we've got all of these things are making huge advancements and the specs are going through the roof quad-core processors in cell phones are you kidding me okay whatever but high-def screens okay they take up lots and lots and lots of power so everything is getting faster hotter and using more power to run but our battery technology is still lagging behind significantly in fact in these electric cars that you're hearing about and some of you might even owned by the way if you own an electric car comment let us know that kind of cool if you ask me anyway back on topic the batteries that they use there are essentially the same batteries that we use in our phones and they're not all that advanced compared to all of the advancements that we're making in technologies in other places so our batteries holding us back right now we're kind of teetering on the edge we can always make bigger batteries but people want skinnier phones so at what point are they too skinny at what point do we need to say no no no guys let's start making our phones particular sewing a bit put bigger batteries in them and at what point are we going to start getting bigger capacity batteries with higher tech in them that last longer come on I want a battery that's going to last me all week don't you so that's what our topic is for the day if you've got some thoughts about batteries or if you like to correct some stuff that I made two simple please feel free to do that down in the comments down below of course give the video a big thumbs up because by doing this stuff we're learning more about our phones and our tablets and by doing that we're going to be able to better understand how they use in this case electricity get more life out of them we're going to talk about sometime in the not-too-distant future about how we can make our batteries last longer not longer capacity but last longer so that we don't have to replace them and wear them out which might be really really important for you if you have a non-removable battery so you'll want to make sure that you subscribe to our video channel so you don't miss out on that in an upcoming episode of the android guy weekly with joe levi for pocket now and the android guy weekly thanks for watching you