• Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    That could is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that headline.

    Also, we can barely get OEMs to support phones for 5 years now…

    • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      2 years ago

      I’d say, 10 years is more than enough, the device is practically unusable after that, even if it’s still working.

      • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        the device is practically unusable after that, even if it’s still working.

        Not if you can change the battery…

        I am having to retire my 7 year old S5, which still works perfectly, because 3G networks are being switched off in a couple of months.

        • TheMurphy@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          The S5 is from 2014 which this year makes 10 years.

          Pons_Aelius says: “the device is practically unusable after that, even if it’s still working.”

          You say: “Not if you can change the battery”

          AND THEN YOU GO ON to tell that your 10 year old phone is working but practically unusable, confirming in the most spectacular way, that Pons was right all along, even matching your very own experience to the point and date! And you still started your argument against it.

          It’s amazing really. Bravisimo.

        • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          2 years ago

          It won’t work with modern apps in about 3 or 4 years, or even if it does, it’ll be so slow, it would practically be unusable.

          I have an Asus Zenfone 3 Max from 2016. It has 8 cores @ 900MHz and 3GB of RAM. I only use it for BT auido streaming (play music on a modified audio system from the 90’s), that’s it. It can play YT videos at Full HD, but searching and screen flipping is so slow, it’s practically unusable. Everything is generally slow on it, even browsing. It takes like 10+ seconds to load a more complex page (with media). Sorry, but that’s unusable to me.

          • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
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            2 years ago

            It won’t work with modern apps in about 3 or 4 years, or even if it does, it’ll be so slow, it would practically be unusable.

            Maybe on Android… my iPhone is 5 years old and works better now (faster, more features, more apps) than it did when it was brand new. It has a 6 core CPU with two of the cores running at 2.65Ghz (the other four cores are 1.8Ghz) - plenty fast enough and fully supported by all the latest software. Really the only thing I’m missing out on is 5G. And wireless charging doesn’t have fancy magnets to hold it in place - oh well.

            Upgrading to the latest model would give me the same number of CPU cores and about 20% higher clock speed and slightly more RAM - both barely noticeable. I would get a better camera - but I’m OK with this one for a bit longer.

            I replaced the battery a few months ago, which was free - under warranty even after five years because Apple’s extended warranty can be paid monthly and lasts until you stop paying (and gets cheaper, as your phone ages). The warranty even covers accidental damage (screen repairs, etc).

            • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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              2 years ago

              That iPhone has at least double the CPU power my Zenfone has. Plus more cache, I presume. If I had double the CPU power I currently have on that thing, I would probably still use it.

              Upgrading to the latest model would give me the same number of CPU cores and about 20% higher clock speed and slightly more RAM - both barely noticeable. I would get a better camera - but I’m OK with this one for a bit longer.

              See, that’s the difference (one of them) between bying an iPhone and an Android phone. Android phones are usually a lot more powerful. I currently use a Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro. 8 cores, 2.0GHz per core, 8GB of RAM, 128GB storage, 4 cameras on the back. And all that for 300€. No iPhone has those specs at that price. Sure, support is shorter, but why people throw that kind of money on something like a phone is beyond me. Still, it’s everyone’s personal choice, and I guess Apple can put in a battery in their devices that will last, oh, 20 years, if they really wanted to, but for most regular Android phones, 10 years is more than enough.

    • elshandra@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      If this was an economically scalable proven thing today, phones wouldn’t be sold with batteries in 5 years.

      • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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        2 years ago

        It is doable, but it’s not practical. Technology moves so fast nowadays, a 10 year old i7 is easilly surpassed by a modern day i3.

        Don’t get me wrong, I use old tech all the time, but it’s becoming increasingly impractical to do so.

          • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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            2 years ago

            I was talking about desktop CPUs, but the same principle applies to any sort of SoC or CPU. What is “the best” today is surpassed within a month or two.

            This is also why I usually buy second hand computer equpment. There’s no point, it’s extremely expensive the day it hits the market, and in a year, it’s like 1/3 of the price. This is especially true for GPUs.

      • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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        2 years ago

        And they don’t support anything higher than 3G, which will go in history in a few years… and then the only thing you can use them for is a paper weight.

        • Noerttipertti@sopuli.xyz
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          2 years ago

          Bollocks. Nokia 800 tough, 2660 flip, 2720 flip, 225 4g, 6300 4g, 8000 4g - just from one manufacturer, and there’s plenty of others.

          • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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            2 years ago

            They’re called burner phones. No real OS on them, no upgrade path, nothing. You wanna make phone calls and send SMS, that’s fine, but let’s face it, most people nowadays don’t use phones just for that.

    • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      2 years ago

      It’s not that radioactive and Nikel 63 decays to copper, so there is no radioactive waste being produced when the battery is depleted.

    • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      2 years ago

      The size is smaller than a coin. Put enough of them in parallel and they’ll output enough power.

      • froh42@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        Yeah 5000 of them to get the 500 mW a smartphone needs in standby mode. 50000 if you want to power up the phone from stabdby (assuming it just uses 5 Watts)

        It is the article that mentioned smart phones which is bullshit. This is a (probably expensive) battery specialized for extremely low power devices which need to run for many years. It will never be something that powers your phone.

        The tech is really cool and there’s applications for such a battery - just not phones.

        • Inktvip@lemm.ee
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          2 years ago

          A lot of sensors/gauges in industrial applications are retrofitted with lorawan or similar remote readout capabilities right now. Battery life for these devices is already a big design consideration, especially since not all locations are easily accessible.

          With a power source like this you would essentially charge a capacitor, use the stored charge to do a sensor read and short data burst, and then wait for the next charge.

        • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          2 years ago

          They could eventually raise power levels. The tech can be further researched. We didn’t come to this Li-Ion battery capacity with no research.

  • RememberTheApollo@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    Oh, good. So whenever some fool tosses a phone out of a car to get crushed on the roadway, shoots one because TikTok, or otherwise mangles a phone, we now have a potential for radioactive material to be spread around?

  • mumblerfish@lemmy.world
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    2 years ago

    100 microwatts? What does a phone use, like 1W? So they are 4 orders of magnitude off? So phones need to become 10,000 times more efficient or the battery that much bigger?

    Edit: Also what is the language of the article? “63 nuclear isotopes”, it sounds like they mean “63 [different/individual atoms of] nuclear isotopes” but do they mean “nickel-63” by this? It is very confusing. Nickel-63 also has a half-life of 100 years, so if the battery is supped to last for 50 years, it has to be producing twice as much energy on day one that is discarded?

    • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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      2 years ago

      Betavolt is planning to boost its tech to produce a 1-watt battery by 2025. And while it still has some way to go, the company seems confident stating development is way ahead of European and American scientific research institutions and enterprises.

      RemindMe! 1 year repeat

      • Gladaed@feddit.de
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        2 years ago

        This is physically implausible. Also self proclaimed advances without 3rd party proof are less than worthless.

        • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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          2 years ago

          Yeah, I thought I was expressing my doubt with the “repeat” part of my Remindme joke, but I guess it wasn’t appreciated.

        • mumblerfish@lemmy.world
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          2 years ago

          Yeah, like to get four orders of magnitude more they must get some real problems. 1. They have to find some isotope that decays very differently, faster/higher energy decays, which should mean more dangerous materials and inconsistent output over time. 2. It might be true that their 100 microwatt battery is fairly resistant to impact and cannot be manipulated to produce some explosion. But if you have a battery with 10,000 times the energy, like the energy equivalent to several modern EV car batteries in your phone? I would really start to doubt it.

  • Juviz@feddit.de
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    2 years ago

    Some of the first pacemakers used radioactive batteries. We left that concept pretty fast. And that is considering you have to cut your patient open to change a pacemaker battery. This will not happen in commercial cellphones

    • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 years ago

      And that’s for a battery that only produces 100 microwatts. A battery that produces 10000 times more power will be a lot spicier.

    • 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      2 years ago

      Others pointed this out as well. It seems it is a scam, but it might become a viable solution in the not so distant future (10 years or so from now).

  • nicetriangle@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    These tech articles on some new advancement are basically the same phenomenon of bullshit as articles ending in a question mark. The answer is always “nah”