The Asian Age

LI- ION KING RULES

We are stuck with Lithium- Ion phone batteries for now. So small mercies lie in quick charges

- ANAND PARTHASARA­THY

The computing power of your mobile phone, grows exponentia­lly every year. Memory, storage, camera specs — everything becomes bigger, better by the month.

But there is one laggard: the battery that fuels your handset. It just doesn’t measure up to the demands made by today’s users. Remember simpler days when a full charge was good for a week?

Sadly, the technology behind the most popular battery material, Lithium Ion — a compound of Lithium as the positive electrode, carbon or graphite as the negative pole and a salt of Lithium as the semi fluid in between — has hardly evolved since the turn of the century. Unless your phone has one of those jumbo batteries of 5,000 mAh or more, you will still run down your battery within a working day. What has changed is the speed at which one can recharge the phone battery. Different makers follow different paths — technologi­es like Qualcomm’s QuickCharg­e, Oppo’s VOOC Flash Charge or OnePlus’s Dash Charge, sharply cut the time for a full charge to half an hour or so.

The recent launch of the Oppo F9 Pro smartphone is an interestin­g response to what customers seem to want — a rapid recharge that will keep them going for a couple of hours.

The proprietar­y Oppo VOOC low voltage quick charge technology has been beefed up to support a new mantra — five- minute charge, two- hour talk. Unlike Qualcomm QuickCharg­e that increases the voltage for fast charging, VOOC increases current at a relatively low voltage. It has added five new layers of security during charging and will kick in, only after checking if the

phone is VOOC- ready. This has one plus point — you can use the phone while it is quick- charging. The F9 Pro’s

battery is medium sized — 3,500 mAh which keeps the phone reasonably light at 169 g.

THE OPPO F9 PRO COSTS 23,990, WHILE A NONVOOC F9 WITH ALMOST SIMILAR SPECS, EXCEPT THE DUAL CAMERA, IS 19,990. THIS SIGNPOSTS AN EMERGING TREND WHERE BUYERS DON’T MIND PAYING A BIT MORE FOR BETTER BATTERY

In other ways this is a 6.3inch device, with 6 GB RAM and 64 GB of storage, a hipower 25 MP selfie camera and a 16 MP- 2MP dual camera combo up front... nothing unusual for this product segment. Usefully, both slots can take 4G VoLTE SIMS.

The Oppo F9 Pro costs ` 23,990, while a non- VOOC F9 with almost similar specs, except the dual camera, is ` 19,990. This signposts an emerging trend where buyers don’t mind paying a bit more just to avoid those battery blues. Meanwhile, barring radical breakthrou­ghs ( see box), the Li- Ion King still rules — for now.

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from India