Battery

Apple working on fuel cell tech that could give devices weeklong battery life

Cody Lee ∙ September 3, 2015

Apple continues to show interest in using hydrogen fuel cell technology, as evidenced in its latest patent filing. On Thursday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office published a patent titled "Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device."

The invention appears to be, at least initially, targeted at the MacBook, as the filing mentions MagSafe several times. But last month, the British firm Intelligent Energy proved the tech can be shrunken down, by showing off an iPhone with a hydrogen fuel cell.

Read More

MIT researchers accidentally quadruple lithium-ion battery lifespan

Christian Zibreg ∙ August 18, 2015

An important breakthrough by Dr. Wang Changan of Tsinghua University and Dr. Li Ju of MIT promises to extend the lifespan of lithium-ion batteries that power today's notebooks, mobile devices and other gadgets by a factor of four.

The unexpected discovery has the potential to allow for an all-week Apple Watch battery life while significantly extending run time between charges when using your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad or Mac notebook.

Remarkably, a team of forgetful researchers have figured out how to quadruple a li-ion battery’s lifespan literally by accident.

Read More

The UNU DX case will give your iPhone a 125% battery boost

Lory Gil ∙ August 5, 2015

When you are on a day trip and using your iPhone to take lots of pictures and video, you probably have noticed how quickly your battery drains when you need it the most. You could run back to the car for a quick juice up, or bring the juice with you wherever you go.

The UNU DX is an external battery case that lets you keep going without having to worry about running out of power. It has a sleek look and protective design that acts as more than just a case when you are far from a power outlet.

Read More

Power Saver Mode tweak brings impressive iOS 9-inspired battery management features to older firmware

Jeff Benjamin ∙ June 27, 2015

iOS 9 has some significant new power saving features that will lend users up to an additional three hours of battery life. Dubbed Low Power Mode in iOS 9, users can eek out up to an extra 3 hours of battery life with the option enabled.

Low Power Mode works by disabling animated wallpapers, Mail Fetch, Background App Refresh, motion effects, and, as recently discovered, throttling the CPU.

Power Saver Mode, a new iOS tweak developed by Elijah Frederickson, tries its best to provide many of the same benefits to jailbroken iPhone users on iOS 8. Power Saver Mode increases contrast, enables Reduce Motion, disables Background App Refresh, location services, Cellular Data when on Wi-Fi, and more. 

Read More

‘Reserve Strap’ adds 30 hours of battery life to your Apple Watch

Cody Lee ∙ Updated June 12, 2018

In March, developers Lane Musgrave and John Arrow announced that they were working on a battery band for the Apple Watch. Not many details were available at the time, but now that the Watch has been out for a few months, the team is ready to make things official.

Meet the Reserve Strap. It's a band that charges your Apple Watch using embedded batteries and a connection to the device's hidden accessory port. Musgrave and Arrow claim that their product is capable of adding more than 30 additional hours of battery life to your Watch.

Read More

iOS 9’s Low Power mode throttles down CPU performance to preserve iPhone’s battery life

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated February 9, 2018

With iOS 9, Apple has brought out a brand new Low Power mode which kicks in when you're nearly out of juice. It was designed to help extend your iPhone's battery life, providing up to three hours of additional time before charging.

After using Geekbench's iPhone application to measure an iPhone 6's processor performance in Low Power, MacRumors was able to determine that this mode reduces processor performance by about forty percent. As a result, an iPhone 6 in Low Power mode would be roughly on par with an iPhone 5s or iPhone 5 in terms of sheer CPU performance.

Read More

AppleCare+ now covers Apple Watch batteries that retain less than 80% of their original capacity

Christian Zibreg ∙ June 26, 2015

AppleCare+ protection for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch has refreshed its terms to cover batteries that retain less than 80 percent of their original capacity within the extended warranty period. The new rules apply to Apple Watch Sport, Watch and Edition models, as discovered by MacRumors.

Previously, the extended warranty used to cover Apple Watch batteries that retained less than 50 percent of their original capacity. Apple officially guarantees the Apple Watch battery will retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity at 1,000 complete charge cycles. Assuming an average of one full charge cycle per day, the specification gives the device's battery a lifespan of about two-and-a-half to three years.

Read More

Trianium Atomic S Battery Case doubles the life of your iPhone 6

Lory Gil ∙ Updated October 14, 2018

When you are going to be out and about for an entire day, do you worry that you will exhaust your iPhone's battery before you can get directions home? Even though the iPhone 6 is estimated to last about 10 or 11 hours with straight internet usage, we regularly drop to 20 percent while still trying to get video of the kids playing.

Trianium's Atomic S case for iPhone 6 has a 3100mAh battery that will double the life of your iPhone so you don't have to worry about running out of juice.

Read More

How Low Power Mode works in iOS 9

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 18, 2018

One of the more significant new features in iOS 9 Apple mentioned during its keynote today is called "Low Power Mode." Similar to Power Reserve on the Apple Watch, this feature is designed to extend the battery life of your device.

First it should be noted that because of the under-the-hood improvements in iOS 9, Apple says battery life for the average user will increase by up to one hour. If you need more, Lower Power Mode gives you up to 3 additional hours.

Read More