A paper published today by Stanford University researchers outlines a way to make lithium batteries a lot safer, opening the door to a host of new applications in everything from smartphones to electric cars.
Japanese researchers have developed a new type of lithium-ion conductor that could help prevent the kind of lithium-ion battery fires that grounded the Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft last year.
Researchers have designed a battery that could keep wearable and health care devices running for 10 or more years without a recharge.
Two of the three major wireless power consortiums have agreed to establish interoperability standards for wireless power.
One year ago this month, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $120 million plan to develop a technology capable of radically extending battery life, and it set a target date of five years. The research effort is now entering its second year and is making progress.
A Japanese start-up says it has finessed a technology that could finally make consumer-grade fuel cells a reality. If successful, the company, Aquafairy, would create a business where many much larger companies have failed.
Panasonic and its subsidiary Sanyo have agreed to plead guilty to price fixing conspiracies involving laptop battery cells and automotive parts. They will pay a total of $56.5 million in criminal fines, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said.
Best Buy has recalled about 5,100 replacement batteries for Apple's MacBook Pro laptops, after 13 reports that the battery caught fire, a U.S. consumer safety agency said.
Intel has joined The Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP), an industry group that hopes its "flexible wireless power" specification for mobile wireless charging can become an industry standard.
They say inspiration can come from the most unlikely places. For a scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center, the Xerox-owned lab in Silicon Valley best known as PARC, it came from a tube of toothpaste.
Researchers at Stanford University have developed a solar cell made entirely from carbon-based materials, they said Wednesday.
Do you know where your smartphone is? Unless you're using it to read PCWorld.com, your phone is probably plugged into an outlet somewhere to charge, because the battery stinks.
Some iPhone 4S users are still complaining about rapid battery drain following Apple's iOS 5.0.1 system update that began rolling out to users Thursday. IOS 5.0.1 was supposed to fix several bugs that caused some iPhone 4S and older iPhone devices to rapidly discharge their batteries. The update also brings more multitouch gestures to the original iPad, several bug fixes for iCloud, and improved Siri voice recognition capability for Australian accents.
Apple says it's still investigating battery drain issues with the iPhone 4S after some users complained that the iOS 5.0.1 update didn't solve their problems. But now Apple is facing new gripes that the iOS 5.0.1 update is causing more problems with the iPhone 4S including; microphone failures, Wi-Fi signal loss, and cellular network reception issues, according to reports.
Apple is working to fix the battery problems faced by users of devices carrying its i0S 5 mobile operating system, solve a security issue with the magnetic SmartCover for the iPad 2 and add a new multi-touch feature to its original tablet.