[Solitaire1]

Originally Posted by DawnFalcon

It's been "a year or two off" for a decade. What solid technological advances can you point me to which will produce that change? As batteries advance, so does the power usage of the devices and their screens, so far...

The issue of battery life reminds me of an article from a 2004 issue of Popular Mechanics. The basic gist of the article is that conventional battery technology (meaning electricity being generated from a difference between two materials) has basically reached a limit as far as stored power is concerned.

To me, one answer to the issue of battery life is to design devices to use user-replaceable batteries. The main reason that I choose to carry a portable CD/MP3 player (which uses two AA batteries) and some CDs when travelling rather than a small flash player with a non-replaceable rechargeable battery (which must be recharged via USB) is that with my CD/MP3 player I can carry several spare AA rechargeable batteries and can purchase more batteries just about anywhere. Another factor in its favor is that it will play for up to 50 hours on one set of batteries, while my flash player will play for 30 hours on one charge.

I think the main reason that battery life has become an issue is that so many devices use batteries that can't be easily replaced by the user. When the battery dies, you only options are to recharge it or attach an external battery pack. This isn't much of an issue as long as you have ready access to a way to recharge your device.