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Comment by marknutter | Hacker News Reader

What percentage of people don't/can't charge their phone every night? And of those who don't/can't, what percentage of them aren't satisfied with the myriad external battery cases and on-the-go-chargers available for smart phones. I challenge the assumption that the majority of people are asking for better batteries. I think it's like people asking Ford for a faster horse.

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I'm not sure it's a perfect analogy. People might ask Ford to go faster, people are asking technology to let them work longer before it dies. I think the sentiment is pretty clear: this doesn't mean we need better Li-ion batteries per se, but either we need hugely longer-lasting sources of power, or we need hugely more efficient displays/radios/processors.

> what percentage of them aren't satisfied with the myriad external battery cases and on-the-go-chargers available for smart phones.

Well, from the article, I'd say the answer is around 33%. Specifically, this was in the article:

> Meanwhile, consumers indicated that the new smartphone feature they were most excited about — picked by 33 percent of respondents — was "improved battery life."

Also...

> I challenge the assumption that the majority of people are asking for better batteries.

I don't think anyone said it's a majority. And this article isn't about an assumption, it's about a survey.

Surveys don't provide perfect information. People may say they want better battery life because that's the only thing they can think about their phones that could get better. 10 years ago if you asked people what they wanted in cell phones they would have said "smaller, thinner flip phones please". Very few people would have asked for a smart phone that was was easy to use and with no physical keyboard. In other words, asking customers what they want is often a terrible way to figure out what to build next.

Also, the type of person willing to respond to a survey like this is likely already an outlier and more prone to running into the limits of what their battery will allow them to do.

If people truly wanted better battery life they would buy huge cases with big batteries built into them. I know very few people who own one of them.

For me it's not the end of the world, just an annoyance. Why am I carrying around a spare battery and charging cable just so my phone can be 2mm thinner?

But you can literally buy cases today that add additional thickness and provide extra battery capacity. Have you bought one, and if not, why? Perhaps you like your thin phone after all?

The battery cases waste way too much space with all the extra layers of plastic, redundant charging circuits and ports. External batteries are still more space-efficient (and yes I do carry them, every day).

I would absolutely buy something like the Motorola Maxx if work didn't require me to use iOS.

So what you want is more thickness, but not too much more thickness. Just the right amount of added thickness for extra battery life. I think it's probably time the industry moved onto more important problems.

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