A key perceived drawback of fully electric cars is their range. Potential customers balk at the possibility of being left stranded by an emptied battery. In some regards this fear is irrational, as most car journeys are relatively short and well within the range of battery capacity.

But when it comes to smartphones, battery capacity is a very real issue, and there is a fine line to be drawn between exploiting every feature out of a high-end smartphone and lasting the entire day without recharging.

One approach to dealing with battery loss is to append a supplementary battery, but this has the side effect of transforming a slender, lightweight device into a bulky, hefty contraption. Another approach is to pit stop wherever a spare power socket is available: but you need good knowledge or luck not to get caught out. A third option is to close down all apps, set brightness to dark, suspend navigation, turn off Bluetooth, and if needs must, turn off all connectivity. Not so smart.

So this leads to the question: why can't we invent better batteries? The simple answer is that it's very hard to do. And it's not for lack of trying. Currently the battery ingredient of choice is lithium ion, which is in billions of devices today. There are alternatives, such as ethanol, but they are less stable, and as such are unlikely to get approval for usage on civil aviation, which would be a major barrier to their adoption.

There have also been multiple other approaches mooted, including a slew of green technologies, such as ambient power harvesting whereby an apparatus attached to the device would scavenge energy in the air, such as that created by radio or television transmission. This works, but the obstacle to this approach is that it can take weeks to recharge a smartphone.

Other approaches that have been discussed include harvesting power via micro turbines placed in the cover of a phone. Again, the time taken – as well as the quantity of waving around the device – would be prohibitive to most.

And for solar power to work, you'd need a rather large panel.

There is one more option for addressing range anxiety: we could simply use a feature phone, which could last days on standby, and deliver half a day of constant conversation.

But the era of the feature phone has long since passed, and we growing increasingly reliant and dependant on smartphones for more and more of our tasks, whether it's navigating around an unfamiliar city, or checking into a flight using a mobile boarding pass.

The outlook for smartphones is that they will become ever more capable, with eight core processors, capable of running eight simultaneous processes likely to launch by the end of the year. Integrated circuits – the brains of these phones – will get steadily cleverer at making the most of the available energy, much as internal combustion engine cars get better and better at using the same fuel that has powered cars for decades.

When it comes to the choice between greater functionality or a guaranteed day's battery life, we opt for features.

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