Two major shortcomings that no smartphone can overcome

Before the iPhone and Android were introduced, no one would have thought that smartphones could develop so rapidly. The development speed of smartphones and mobile Internet far exceeds the popularization speed of radio, television and desktop Internet, and it is still in the early stages of the development of smartphone mobile Internet. But today, whether it is iPhone, Android phone or other smartphones, there are still two major shortcomings that have not been overcome. And there is also the danger of getting worse and worse.

Preface

It is undeniable that the design and manufacturing level of smartphones have made significant progress compared to the past. Curved screens and borderless phones, which were only conceptual designs in the past, have become a reality in our lives. Moreover, these mobile phone products can be commercialized on a large scale and can be regarded as mature products.

These are the appearance of mobile phones. In terms of mobile phone functions, the current smart phones can do more than people imagined before. Mobile phones with heart rate monitoring, fingerprint recognition and even iris recognition have appeared. The screen resolution of mobile phones even exceeds the resolution of computer monitors and TVs. The performance of mobile phones has also developed several times faster than that of PCs. The first dual-core processor was born in 2009, and MediaTek just released its own ten-core processor not long ago. It has only been a few years since then.

But in some aspects, compared with the phones of the feature phone era, today's smartphones can be said to have made no progress, and are even far worse than feature phones. These are also the two major shortcomings that currently restrict the development of smartphones: protection and battery life.

Protection

Nowadays, no matter what brand or material a mobile phone is made of, metal, plastic, wood, glass, etc., as long as it is a large-screen touch phone with a straight-screen design, it is at risk of breaking the screen if it falls to the ground at any angle at a height of more than one meter. This is the safety hazard that the large screen brings to users while bringing visual impact and enjoyment.

The release of iPhone has influenced and changed the interactive design of smartphones. From then on, the original physical keyboard and small screen mobile phone gradually changed to a large screen mobile phone composed of a whole large screen and a fuselage. The mobile phone that originally relied mainly on the physical keyboard for input gradually changed to a mobile phone that uses a virtual keyboard for operation and input. The mobile phone has entered the era of large-screen touch from the era of small screens, and with it, glass materials are widely used in current smartphones. Now the only mainstream mobile phone manufacturer that still insists on using physical keyboards may be BlackBerry.

Some people may ask, isn't glass more protective than the plastic used in previous mobile phones? And many glasses are harder than metals, and many bulletproof devices are made of glass. Why does the use of a large amount of glass in the body make the overall protection of mobile phones seem much worse than that of feature phones in the past?

Here we must first clarify two concepts: Hardness is the ability to resist hard objects from pressing into the surface. The hardness of glass is indeed very high, higher than many metals, but glass is a brittle material and is easy to break. Under the action of external forces (such as stretching, impact, etc.), it only produces a small deformation, that is, fracture and damage. This is why large-screen glass mobile phones are prone to shattering when they fall or collide.

As for the mobile phones in the past, let's take Nokia, which is the most drop-resistant in our impression, as an example. Most of the materials used in Nokia's mobile phones in the past were plastic, and even the screens were made of plastic. The hardness of plastic may not be as high as glass and metal, but its toughness (the ability to absorb energy and undergo plastic deformation before breaking) is much better than glass and metal. Therefore, although the plastic body will be damaged in falls and collisions, it will not break as easily as glass. Therefore, it is reasonable that mobile phones with large screens made of glass are not as protective as feature phones made mainly of plastic.

Some people also say that the reason why Nokia's mobile phones are resistant to falling is because Nokia was once a manufacturing company that was involved in rubber, cable, pharmaceutical, natural gas, oil and other industries, and later entered the military industry and made military rifles and bullets. Nokia's good protection is due to genetics.

Battery life

The screen resolution of mobile phones climbs to a new level every year, the performance of mobile phone processors and graphics chips also increases significantly every year, and the manufacturing process of mobile phones also makes new progress every year. However, there is one technology that has not made any breakthrough progress for many years, that is the lithium battery of mobile phones.

The lithium battery technology used in our current mobile phones is actually not fundamentally different from the first commercial lithium-ion battery released by Sony in 1991. Most mainstream smartphones now have a battery life that can only meet the needs of one day of use, and very few can meet the needs of more than two days of use.

Currently, there are several mainstream smartphones that are recognized as having relatively long battery life, namely Motorola DROID Turbo, Sony Xperia Z3, Xperia Z3 Compact, Huawei Mate 7 and Samsung Galaxy Note 4.

But these phones are different: Motorola DROID Turbo and Huawei Mate 7 have built-in large-capacity batteries that make their battery life longer than ordinary phones, while Sony Xperia Z3, Xperia Z3 Compact and Samsung Galaxy Note 4 achieve long battery life through system optimization and use of the system's own power-saving technology.

However, whether by increasing battery capacity or optimizing power-saving mode, it has nothing to do with the battery technology itself. Moreover, the effect of achieving long battery life through system optimization and using the system's own power-saving technology is very limited after all. Therefore, the key factor restricting the battery life of mobile phones is the lack of progress in battery technology itself.

And another sad truth is that there is still no possibility of a breakthrough in mobile phone lithium battery technology in the next few years.

The number of lithium ions in a lithium battery is fixed. If you want a longer battery life, you must increase the number of batteries, but this means heavier equipment, greater heat generation, and a higher possibility of overheating and explosion. If you want to be safer or more portable, you must sacrifice the number of batteries and usage time.

Previously, some companies have claimed to have made breakthrough progress in lithium battery technology, but they all ended in failure.

In 2001, lithium-ion battery startup A123 Systems claimed that it could manufacture lithium-ion battery lithium iron phosphate cathode materials into uniform nanoscale ultra-small particles, which would greatly increase the battery's discharge power due to the dramatic increase in particles and total surface area, and that the overall stability and cycle life would not be affected. However, it ultimately failed in 2012 because it was unable to mass-produce the lithium batteries it described, nor could it convert electricity safely and efficiently.

In 2012, Envia Systems, a battery company based in California, announced at a major conference in Washington that it had developed an energy-dense battery that could store twice as much energy per unit weight as current batteries, and at half the cost. When General Motors heard that Envia could develop such a high-energy battery, it immediately invested $7 million in it, hoping to cooperate in the electric vehicle business. By 2013, Envia had failed to deliver on its claimed "amazing results," resulting in the loss of funding and General Motors' partnership.

In addition, some organizations and companies are trying to find another new battery to replace lithium batteries, but the cruel reality is that it is more difficult to achieve in a short period of time.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.