StoreDot Rapid-Charging Battery Heads to Smartphones This Year

BARCELONA, Spain — Smartphones are amazing things, but one gripe felt almost universally is the problem of dreadful battery life. StoreDot hopes to ease our worries, showing off the latest iteration of its charge-in-seconds tech at Mobile World Congress — technology it says we’ll see in a real smartphone before the end of this year.

StoreDot’s system, which you can see in action in the video above, uses a different chemical makeup to traditional batteries. We saw a modified Samsung Galaxy S5 go from 15 percent battery to 100 percent in a little under two minutes, but StoreDot says it hopes to get a 1,500mAh battery to charge in one minute by the end of the year.

While mobile makers like Samsung and Apple have focused on trying to make batteries last longer, StoreDot’s approach is different. Instead, it wants to build batteries that charge up very quickly, making topping up your phone’s charge a trivial matter. There’s a trade-off involved however — StoreDot’s current battery will only last you around 4-5 hours. But if charging is the work of a moment, having to charge a few times through the day might not be such a terrible compromise.

Electric cars could be next

StoreDot, which first gave its fast-charging battery a public airing in April last year, is using Mobile World Congress to reveal plans to put its rapid-charging batteries into electric cars. Details are scant, but the company told me it wants to be able to charge a Tesla in five minutes.

StoreDot’s tech may not yet be completely practical, but it’s exciting to see this potential new twist on smartphone batteries progressing to the point that we should soon see it appear in a publicly-available product. Stay tuned.