The Register this morning reports that Toshiba have developed a new type of battery for mobile devices which can be fast charged reaching 80% capacity in just one minute!! The battery also lasts much longer than today’s best of breed Lithium ion batteries and operates more effectively over a wider temperature range, down to -40°C.
This is potentially important news for the GI and GIS industry as it makes mobile GIS a more realistic proposition. At the moment Mobile GIS workers must compromise their working routines with frequent battery swaps, sophisticated power management techniques, which drastically reduce computing power and general hassle. Improved battery performance has had the focus of much of the ICT industry for the pass couple of years driven mostly from the needs of the mobile phone industry, but it looks like the GIS industry will also be grateful recipients of these improvements.
Afterall GI is often at its most valuable when available on in the field!
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
One reply on “Magic batteries – not aprils fools yet!!”
Making GIS more mobile has to be a growth market, both for GIS vendors and users. Improved battery life and chargability can only accelorate this growth. Fujitsu are currently prototyping fuel technology for lap-tops, but for some reason they are using methane for the devlopment system, as opposed to hydrogen – but this does promice 12hr battery life. The other dependancy for improved field GIS use has got to be telecommunications. We need improvements in bandwidth, and pricing structures. After that, we just have to convince end users that they need all this…..