I’ve always expressed my opinion on the fact that nobody can really complain about having better battery life. I mean, the only thing better than having a really kick booty phone is that you don’t have to worry about charging it every few hours, right? As somebody whose phone is practically on life support, I can say that battery life is probably one of the most enticing features any smartphone can offer. Currently, if your phone can last an entire 12-14 hours with moderate to heavy usage without completely dying you can pretty much say your battery life is “fantastic” for a smartphone, even though it’s laughable compared to the flip phones we used to carry which could last several days without a charge (with good reason, of course). So now that we’ve moved on to bigger and better phones we really just need bigger and better batteries to support it too.

A group of students at the University of Southern California may have found a new method of keeping our phone charged longer after being connected for a shorter period of time. These students and professors have created a lithium-ion battery that can charge within 10 minutes and last three times as long as the batteries we see in our phones today. The battery works by using nano-sized spheres of silicon to help boost battery performance. This type of battery is still under development however, and probably won’t be available for another two to three years at most.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that there are other developments in the works to make our battery life last longer, but this is probably the most efficient method I’ve read about as it takes care of two – count ‘em, two – first world problems that we currently encounter every day. First of all, no more “I forgot to charge my phone at night!” business, because A.) If you forget to charge your phone one night it will only take ten minutes to recover and B.) If you remembered to charge your phone the night before that then your phone would probably still be good to go anything. Just like that, bam! Magic.

I’m actually really excited for this technology. This technology is said to make our phones last up to three times as long as what we currently get. That means if I could somehow get one of those batteries for my 4S, my phone would last at least 3 hours. Talk about insane! (I’m just kidding, I’d probably get about two days’ worth out of it) but nonetheless it’s still a cool concept.

Normally around this point I would point out pros and cons of such a concept, but as long as the battery isn’t extremely bulky (our phones are already becoming wide enough as it is, adding too much thickness just sounds like it would be a stretch for any hand) I can’t really think of anything that bad that could happen from batteries that last longer other than perhaps the companies that make chargers will see a bit of a drop in profits as we will no longer have to purchase a charger for every room in the house; that’s about it.

Needless to say (but I’m gonna say it anyway) I’m really excited for this development and I can’t wait until it’s finally implemented into our phones. I feel like we’ve been waiting a long time for our smartphones to be able to catch up to the battery life we were so used to with our flip phones.