With the continuous development of technology, mobile phones have become an indispensable tool in people's daily life. However, as the features of mobile phones continue to increase, so does their size and weight, which is not a small burden for users.
So how do mobile phone manufacturers achieve a balance between thinness and battery life? Judging by the development of smartphones, there are several means.
Directly reduce the battery capacity
In the early days of mobile phones, when the stacking capacity and battery cell technology of the battery did not make much progress, if you want a thin and light mobile phone, you often get excess body space by directly reducing the battery capacity, which can be more convenient for the compressor body volume, the most famous of which is the former "proper use for a day".
Optimize the internal structure of the phone
Reducing the battery capacity directly is obviously not the problem, and constantly optimizing the internal stacking is the right way to go, so using more efficient circuit design, thinner and lighter screens, and a more compact internal layout can achieve thinner and lighter mobile phones without reducing the battery capacity.
For example, Apple used an OLED screen and a dual-layer motherboard design for the first time on the iPhone X, which greatly reduced the internal space of the motherboard on the body, allowing the iPhone X to be smaller than the iPhone 8 Plus while still plugging in an almost the same large battery.
(Source: @ZEALER)
Increase battery density
As major brands are pursuing the development of image, performance, battery life, etc., the space of the motherboard is also squeezed to the limit by various outsole CMOS sensors, and the battery capacity is gradually stretched, and the internal space of the mobile phone can no longer give in to the battery, so improving the battery density has become the key.
This year, battery technology has also ushered in a new breakthrough, and the new silicon carbon anode battery has greatly improved the battery density.
(Source: @DTCHAT)
Each has launched its own batteries, but they should all come from the same supply chain technology. Large-capacity batteries have been unprecedentedly popular, and various 5000mAh, 5500mAh and even 6000mAh super-large batteries have emerged in an endless stream, and at the same time, the volume has hardly increased, so that the thinness and battery life have gradually begun to have both.
New direction in the future: improve the level of software and hardware electronic control
The popularity of large batteries is a good thing, but consumers have also begun to gradually find that the increase in batteries does not seem to be absolutely linked to battery life, and 5000mAh mobile phones will still have battery life anxiety, mainly from both software and hardware.
In terms of hardware, in order to improve the image capability of mobile phones, many brands of mobile phones use three or even four cameras, and multiple cameras often need to be started at the same time when shooting, so the power consumption is also higher than that of the previous single camera and double camera, and the process level of CMOS has also remained unchanged for a long time.
For example, the IMX989 with a one-inch outsole uses a 40nm process, which may not be backward in the camera field, but it is not advanced for a mobile phone that has to pay attention to efficiency everywhere, and it was not until the iterative LYT-900 launched this year that the new 22nm process was replaced, and the energy efficiency ratio was improved. In addition, the gradual increase in operating memory and storage space is also slowly eating up this extra battery capacity.
In addition to the gradual increase in hardware and the increase in power consumption, in the final analysis, it is caused by the poor level of electronic control of the software.
For example, the LTPO screen that just came out that year, many people have measured that most APPs in practical applications do not have adaptive refresh rates, wasting the power consumption saved on the hardware in vain, and many people also ridiculed that LTPO is lonely, and there are many software optimization problems such as the difficulty of one core and nine cores.
There is also the excellent electronic control level of iPhone, only with a battery capacity of about 3000-4000mAh, but it can achieve Android 4000-5000mAh battery life, which tells us how much room for improvement of electronic control is.
Write at the end
The balance between thinness and battery life is a relative concept, and the needs of different users need to be taken into account. When achieving a balance between thinness and battery life, the best balance can be achieved by optimizing the internal structure and electronic control level of the mobile phone. Nowadays, different mobile phone manufacturers have adopted different strategies in the pursuit of a balance between thinness and battery life. vivo has reduced the weight of phones without sacrificing battery capacity by adopting new cells and optimized designs, such as the upcoming iQOO Neo9S Pro+. OPPO, on the other hand, has increased the battery capacity on the basis of the same thickness, such as the OnePlus Ace3 Pro, which shows OPPO's emphasis on battery life.
As international manufacturers, Samsung and Apple have always been at the forefront of thin and light design, and have achieved excellent battery life performance in the same thin and light volume by continuously improving electronic control management. These strategies reflect each vendor's understanding and trade-offs of user needs.
In the future, with the continuous development of technology, we believe that more technologies and methods will be applied to the balance between thinness and battery life to bring users a better experience.