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A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

techradar.com

21–30 of 86 posts

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#21
That'll probably be useful for niche applications but not general public smartphones because phones last for a few years at most, this would carry disposal costs, and risk of pollution would probably be too high (Nickel-63 has a half-life of 100 years so while it does decay into copper it takes time...).

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#22
How to tell the author is completely clueless wrt nuclear physics:

What the company is apparently saying:

"To create the radioactive battery, Betavolt's scientist used nickel-63, which is a radiactive element, as the energy source... "

The author describing this in his own words:

"The compact battery uses 63 nuclear isotopes to generate..." "

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#23
post #6

90% of the people I know keep their near their head, near the genitals or near their heart when not actively using it. I read the part about them asserting that it's safe, but if they want this to actually sell without a major stigma, especially in the era of social media, they will need to go out of their way to prove it.

It took 50 years for people to realize fat is healthy and sugar loaded bread and grains is bad for you. Because of "science".

iPhones straddling your genitalia is considered "safe"' today. Can't wait to hear from science towards the end of the century.

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#24
post #15
post #8

But the screen cracked 49 years ago. It stopped getting OS updates 48 years ago. And the 5G towers got deprecated 40 years ago.

Good thing we have removable batteries in all the phones now /s

It is coming (again) thanks to one of the largest single market on the planet making replacable batteries in portable electronics a requirement by 2027 (in 3 years time) [0].

I find it highly unlikely that there will be double production of devices for the EU market on one hand and the rest of the world on the other (and the biggest producers are not going to be pulling out of the market for obvious reasons).

[0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230609IP...

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#26
post #6

90% of the people I know keep their near their head, near the genitals or near their heart when not actively using it. I read the part about them asserting that it's safe, but if they want this to actually sell without a major stigma, especially in the era of social media, they will need to go out of their way to prove it.

Imagine iPhones with Geiger counters. Nicely aggregated in bite sized daily stats through Apple health

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#29
post #6

90% of the people I know keep their near their head, near the genitals or near their heart when not actively using it. I read the part about them asserting that it's safe, but if they want this to actually sell without a major stigma, especially in the era of social media, they will need to go out of their way to prove it.

The way to solve this is via the marketing department.

Someone really helped when they renamed Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging to MRI

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