Helping Batteries to Keep On Going and Going

What good is a tiny thin sliver of electronic gadgetry if the battery dies in your pocket after a few minutes? Not much, and now that manufacturers have mastered the building of pocket-sized wonders that are often too small for our fingers, they are starting to pay closer attention to battery life.

New machines come with smarter batteries and miserly circuitry that works longer. In some cases, the manufacturers are even making the gizmos a little bit bigger to accommodate a battery with more capacity.

The designers are working within the limits of several laws of physics. They all want their latest gadgets to offer bright screens, faster action, infinite range and long battery life while weighing next to nothing, but there's no way to escape the fact that the flashiest features consume more power.

So some designers are cutting features while others are adding fatter batteries as they try to satisfy the demands of consumers. Of course, others are continuing to pile on features for customers who don't mind frequent trips to the recharger.

One of the biggest challenges for designers and consumers is the fickle nature of batteries. Temperature, age and use patterns affect life span, and it is possible for two people to get widely differing performance from the same device. While keeping batteries cool and well charged helps, all batteries wear out.

Gadget designers are combating this challenge by building in more intelligence that regulates the power consumption with all of the zeal of someone raised during the Depression. Most devices now have dedicated chips that shut down parts of the device when they are not needed. Some even have special chips that watch the battery and simulate the internal chemistry to optimize the charging process.

Laptops

The laptop marketplace is separating into the world of so-called heavier and cheaper desktop replacements: the ultraportable notebooks that are optimized to run long and weigh little.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X60 (,400 to ,000, depending on options), the latest in the well-regarded laptop line, weighs close to three pounds, but it can last longer than eight hours on a single charge.

The secret is the ability to add more batteries. You can pry out the DVD drive and replace it with a battery that adds several more hours. If that's not enough, you can add a flat battery that weighs about a pound to the bottom of the laptop and adds several more hours of use.

The extra batteries are just one part of the equation. The X60 would not be able to live as long if it was not careful with the power. Howard Locker, Lenovo's chief architect for the ThinkPad line, says the laptop comes with a separate chip inside that constantly audits the power used by all components.

There are other features, like dual antennas for Wi-Fi, making it easier to pick up a signal. "If you have poor antenna design, you can overcompensate by giving it more power," he said. "We are so focused on our antenna design, and that can save a lot of power."

Panasonic, another competitor in the ultraportable world, is actually adding a bit of weight in its latest offering. The Toughbook T4 (,980 to ,300) is now 3.4 pounds, about half a pound heavier than its predecessor, the W4. The electronics are lighter, but the battery pack is bigger, providing about three extra hours of work.

The shell of the T4 is made out of magnesium, a choice that Panasonic made because the designers found it to have five times the strength of titanium for the needs of its designers and 20 times the strength of the plastic found in most laptops.

The metal conducts so well that some of the slower Panasonic laptops can be sealed up to run without a fan, a feature that saves more power and keeps dust and other contaminants out of the inside.

Kyp Walls, a manager in the laptop division, also says Panasonic is quite proud of its displays because they are among the brightest in the market without consuming too much extra power.

Mr. Walls said the company identified five factors that were each worth a 10 percent improvement in brightness. "It's a different kind of fluorescent bulb," he said. "It's a different kind of gas." And it is all a result of "a lot of investigation."

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