Modern Laptop battery contains its own monitoring circuit which reports the status of the battery to the OS. The circuit is also responsible for preventing battery from overcharging, this comes handy when the laptop is switched off.

The scurity researcher has discovered that the batteries on Macbooks are shipped with the default password on the micro-controller. It can be inferred that if someone knows the default password, the firmware of the battery can be controlled to do many things from simply ruining the battery to install a malware which reinstalls whenever the OS boots. Since you gain access to the micro-controller that controls the battery, it becomes actually possible to overuse and overheat the battery to a limit where it can even catch fire.

Miller claims this hack can make the hacker achieve something that was unachievable before —  it’s possible to use them to do something really bad – Insert a new Hard drive, reinstall the software, flash the BIOS, and every time it would reattack and screw the user. And the worse part, it undetectable and impossible to  eradicate other than removing the battery.

Apple released a fix in 2009 to fix problems by creating two passwords used for the chip on the battery. By hacking that password, its possible to do anything like giving false reading to the charger and let it overcharge to cause fire, or to completely rewrite the firmware.

Hack is Not Easy

Luckily enough, miller hasn’t made all details public. He claims that to successfully exploit this vulnerability,  attacker has to analyze the 2009 software updates from Apple for the password. If he is able to retrieve the password, he will have to find a vulnerability in the interface between the OS and the firmware.

But these details would be made public at te yearly security conference, BlackHat. He will also be unveiling a tool to public that will change the password of the battery to a random string. Hope Apple releases a fix before that.

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ScreenDimmer is a jailbreak mod for the iOS 4.x, iOS 3.x that lets you manage various brightness and backlight settings on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad.

ScreenDimmer can be customized via the standard settings apps. You can  toggle between settings that let you specify screen dim timeout in seconds, or turn off backlight totally. Like android, you can also chose to keep the screen ON  while plugged-in and even lock the device moment its unplugged. If you’re looking to stretch out a little more battery life from your jailbroken iDevice, keeping the screen dim or the backlight off entirely is a good way to do it.

Features Summary:

• Can turn the display’s backlight of
• Dims the screen after a user defined time
• Doesn’t dim the screen if the battery is being charged
• Doesn’t dim if an app needs the screen (navigagtion software, video players, .)
• Option to disalbe AutoLock if device is charging/locked
• Option to disable lock directly after reboot/respring
• Ability to exclude apps from dimming
• Configuration interface in the Settings app

The app costs $2 in the Cydia app store (Bigboss repo) and is worth it if you worry too much about the battery life.

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Same is the case with the batteries that are used to power Electric cars.  Such cars have very long charging time, for instance, a minimal charge takes 30 minutes or more. And when you actually wish to move, it would need that charge.

One company has made the first breakthrough by inventing a Lithium Polymer battery that puts every other battery manufacturer to shame. DBM Energy has been manufacturing batteries that allow forklift trucks to operate in warehouses for 28 hours between charges. Their latest creation is called KOLIBRI, which has been deployed into a car and the results are pretty amazing.

The battery was put to test using standard Audi A2, a battery operated Electric car. With everything stock except for the battery, the car was set to benchmark the battery power.

With approx. 6 minutes of charge, the car traveled whooping 375 miles (600km) over a journey of seven hours averaging speeds of 55mph. On finishing the drive, CEO of DBM offered to recharge the phones of the reporters as it still had some juice left. 6 min charge time for 100 kWh – it is important to know with what kind of a fast charger it was done, but in anyway – if battery can sustain 2500 cycles with this kind of fast charger – it is another breakthrough. Question will in Charging Infrastructure, but it is 6 min for 100 kWh – too good to be true for a Lithium Metal Polymer!

The drive is now called Munich-Berlin project, with which DBM wanted to know if its batteries would work for road cars rather than just forklifts, and without a doubt it looks promising for almost everything from trucks to cars.

Comparison with Other batteries : Over 300 Wh/kg – to put it in perspective – Nissan Leaf 24 kWh battery will be less than 80 kg! We have heard that Renault Fluence 24 kWh battery weight is 240 kg.

One final piece of good news about this battery is DBM believes it can manufacture it cheaper than the other lithium ion batteries being developed. That means the premium for an electric car using a DBM battery solution should be lower than the competition.

Welcome to the future where Short Charges, Extended Battery life has become a reality. DBM seem to have solved both problems with wide range of battery options of batteries that charge insanely fast, and batteries that last really long.

This car is definitely was not optimized for optimal battery performance, if in future lighter cars are made, the efficiency could be even better.

375 miles for a 5 minute charge is something that anyone would beg for, making it to be more than enough for most journeys.

So when exactly are we getting these in EVs? It would take sometime till some car manufacturer holds the deal with DBM and puts these powerhouse into commercial cars. Going green would now be more easier.

We write about Latest in tech, Google, Green Tech, Gadgets, Open Source, Programming. Grab them all@taranfx on Twitter or below:

Android being open, certain OS-level hacks can be employed to save battery for those last hours when you need it the most.

SuperPower is a battery saving utility that allows you to set certain variables so when a certain threshold is reached the app will perform a certain feature.

Main features that the app has control over are:

• Cellular data
• Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth
• CPU speed * ROOT *
• Bands (2G/3G) * ROOT *

It can change the above features based on the following variables:

• Screen state
• Wi-Fi network connection state
• Lock screen visibility state
• Download speed
• Foreground application
• Tethering state
• Low battery state
• Charging state
• Schedule data connection to be available at certain times
• 2G/3G switching is supported in two different ways: RIL injection (highly experimental, any ROM, possible side effects) and Sidekick (AOSP ROMs signed with platform test keys)

How Power Saving on Android Works

SuperPower attempts to save battery power by controlling various power hungry components and features of the device. Everything in this app is Event-driven rather than polling, which makes this app itself play nice on battery.

App compatibility: App should work on any android devices, but since the app is in beta stages, it gaurantees few phones like Galaxy S, Nexus one, G1, Desire, Hero with OS 1.6+

SuperPower v0.60 can be found on Market under the name “SuperPower XDA-BETA”.

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The App is called PowerTutor, it does provide insight as to what’s using the most juice out of the battery – Is it the display, or CPU usage on an App, and even breakdown of power usage by apps.

No doubt, it’s far more superior than Android’s native power monitor, and in fact most advance app that ever landed on a Phone. The native Android monitor  is limited to the percentage of battery use by component or application.

PowerTutor goes down into detail and draws a graph to represent the actual power consumption over time at the component, app level. This can be a great benchmark for choosing applications, when there are two identical apps in the Android Market

It’s likely to be a great app for App developers who can now analyze and Optimize battery usage while developing one so as to optimize it for the best battery life. And when the god work is done, they can compare and declare that their app is efficient and more competitive than others.

One more use I could see is in it’s Wi-Fi Power usage monitor. User will now know at which positions in the room, wifi signal drops by fractions and results in higher power usage.

If you own Motorola Droid, this app can help you monitor Battery usage while Droid is OverClocked to 1Ghz or above.

PowerTutor itself uses about 5-7% of a Nexus One‘s CPU, so running it all the time is such a bad idea. But it’s definitely a great app to play around.

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The battery backup reduced from 2.5hrs to merely 1hr. I believed this was due to the the heavy Nvidia GT m230  GPU (Windows 7 doesn’t support NVIDIA Powermizer which reduces battery usage by lowering the clock). But very soon, all other Operating Systems started to mimic Windows 7.

This didn’t end here.

Recently, it became worse from bad when Laptop battery was totally dead.  The battery backup went literally down to zero. After couple of days, [I don't know why] battery came back to life but with reduced life. The same battery that used to have 1hr of juice, started giving me no more than 10 minutes.

I tried Ubuntu, XP, everything, it was all the same, max battery backup was 15 minutes. I thought it could be manufacturer’s fault, but I was so wrong, the fact is: Windows 7 destroys your battery, permanently.

A very long thread on Microsoft’s support site dedicated to Windows 7 battery problems kicked off in early June 2009.

Microsoft claimed that the problem was in the Windows 7 tool that decided when the battery had been drained, or was unable to hold a charge.

“We are investigating this issue in conjunction with our hardware partners, which appears to be related to system firmware (BIOS), The warning received in Windows 7 uses firmware information to determine if battery replacement is needed.”

While some users on that thread agree with Microsoft that the warnings are spurious, others believe that the new operating system has permanently crippled their batteries.

“I have tried charging the battery while the computer is off or in another OS, and it does not work,” said someone identified as “DanLee81″ today. “It will charge for a few minutes, then stop. The battery will say it’s full when it actually only has a few minutes of charge, and when you take out the A/C, it will either last for a few minutes, or completely shut off your laptop. This behavior happens in all [OSes] after Windows 7 damages the battery, not just within Windows 7.”

Another one, from Russ Latham claims:

It seems that after Windows 7 has damaged your battery, it doesn’t matter what OS you use.  The solution is, obviously, don’t use Windows 7 at all.  Not even once, unless you’re prepared to shell out money for a new battery.  What a shame.  I really liked Windows 7 but now I’m using Linux on my new laptop (with 2nd battery!).  I can’t afford to buy a new laptop batteries all the time.

Clearly, 100s of users can’t be wrong. The damages are indeed permanent- batteries underperformed, even after they abandoned Windows 7 and returned their notebooks to running Windows XP or Vista, or switched to Linux.

“Rolling back does not work either,in another message on Tuesday. I feel rip[ped] off!”

Situation is much more complex than What Microsoft thinks it is.

Almost all users using Notebooks from Acer, Dell, HP, Samsung, Sony and Toshiba have reported problems. Most have seen battery-life reduction 66%. That means 1/3rd the battery life.

I hope they do something about it fast, or it won’t be far when people get their say in consumer courts, suing the company for billions.

Update: Why windows 7 Appears to kill Battery?

Have you faced a similar issue? Let us know.

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Cost of manufacture of these batteries is estimated to be several billion $s every year, and the environment pollution caused is almost irreversible.

To counter this problem, conducting polymers have long been thought to be a solution in developing lightweight, flexible, nonmetal batteries. But up until now, these polymers have had been impractical because regular paper can’t hold enough of them work effectively.

Thanks to the new research by ppsala researcher Maria Stromme and her team surrounding the use of Cladophora (green algae) in a flexible, ultrathin alternative, it looks as if we may finally be onto a good Green Technology. Researchers purport that these super skinny cells could be placed in areas where batteries are currently unable to go. Wha tI can think of is all those charged wall sensors, energized clothing or even light-up wrapping paper.

Cladophora can also be used to make a type of cellulose that has 100 times the surface area of cellulose found in paper. That means it can hold enough conducting polymers to effectively recharge and hold electricity for long amounts of time.

The algae-based paper sheet batteries hold up to 200% more charge than regular paper-based cellulose batteries, and they can recharge in as little as 11 seconds. Eventually, they could be used in any application that requires flexible electronics — for example, clothing or packaging that lights up. Perhaps most importantly, the algae batteries could one day cut down on e-waste from conventional metal batteries.

Better still, prototypes have shown the ability to hold a significant charge, but unfortunately for us all, no specific production date has been pegged.

Most Notebooks, gadgets use Lithium ion batteries. Life of such batteries can be extended using some Expert Tips and Tricks:

1. A Lithium Ion battery should never be charged to 100% or fully Discharged. The famous 80-20 rule is applicable here as well, though in a different way. Charging to 80% increases battery life. Most newer Laptops have this feature of “preserve battery life” by limiting it to 80%.
2. Don’t wait for full discharge, charge it frequently. Keeping the battery near to 80% always, gives better life. This is also what many vendors claim as “memory effect”.
3. Every battery has limited Full charge-discharge cycles. Of the order of 300+. In other words a typical phone/laptop battery can be fully charged/discharged 300 times. Doing more frequent charges, as specified in point #2, will increase overall life.
4. During First time use (when the battery is new) don`t use it till its fully charged. This is why it is always written on manuals “let the device charge for 2-3 hours”.
5. Best way to increase battery life is Not to use it. If you keep AC power plugged in on your laptop, keeping the battery at 80% (as in #1), your battery will last longer. Though discharging it once in a month would be must in such cases.
6. Surrounding temperature contributes a lot. Colder weather gives better battery life. So make sure your cellphone/laptop doesn`t overheat, if it does, find ways to keep it cool.
7. When not in use for long, store the battery keeping pt 1 and pt 6 in mind.
8. Most-Important: Never leave the machine plugged in all the time. Laptops are meant to be portable. Using it as a desktop that never runs on the battery will destroy your battery life.
   Discharge-Cycles are your friend. Never letting the battery complete a cycle will greatly diminish your run-time. Try to avoid charging the battery unless it’s drained past 30%. Any time the battery drains past 50% and charges more than 50% counts as a cycle. The farther you let it drain before the charge – the better its overall health will remain. 30 cycles in a year is not a good thing.

Apart from this there are specific tips to elongate battery life which are related to user’s usage:

1. Keep the screen brightness to as low as possible. This can reduce battery consumption by upto 40%.
2. Don’t do heavy tasks like gaming when running on battery. This often uses High CPU,graphics which drains battery faster.
3. Kill background processes that you are not using, multitasking is one serious battery killer.
4. For Cellphones only: USe headsets for long conversations. This will give you 40-70% improvement in talk time. Why? because when you hold the cellphone in hands, your body absorbs most of the RF. [Also See: Cell Phones WiFi and Health Effects]
5. For Laptops: Use tools like NHC: Notebook hardware control which can let you adjust CPU clock and hence save battery.

Follow all the steps and I bet you can double the battery juice. Related: Secrets for prolonging lithium-based battery life.

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Ruston Panabaker, Microsoft’s principal program manager of strategic silicon partnering, shows how later builds of Windows 7 were able to let the processor enter low-power states for longer periods of time, saving more power.

Microsoft themselves showed us Live test to prove Vista is crap — Two identical laptops playing the same DVD, with the Windows 7-equipped notebook getting 20 percent better battery life than one running Windows Vista. In general, users can expect newer systems running Windows 7 to offer 10 percent to 20 percent better battery improvement when watching a DVD.

“We’re achieving a very significant amount of battery savings,” said Microsoft principal program manager Ruston Panabaker.

Microsoft and Intel declined to say just how much overall battery life improvement Windows 7 might offer as compared to Vista, saying there are too many factors that can influence such results. May be this will spoil Vista’s image. Do they need to ?

(Credit: Stephen Shankland/CNET)

“I don’t want to state a number,” Panabaker said at the event, which was organized by Intel and Microsoft.

The event was designed to outline the joint work that the two halves of Wintel have been doing to make Windows 7 perform better in areas such as virtualization, power management, and performance.

On the performance side, Microsoft and Intel showed a reference system that can boot up in 11 seconds, although again real-world performance is likely to vary a lot based on what’s inside the PC and how well tuned it is. For instance, the system shown Tuesday had a solid-state drive and other high-performance componets.

The move comes as Microsoft gears up for the October 22 launch of Windows 7.

Perhaps the most encouraging thing for Microsoft is the fact that Intel itself is willing to use Windows 7 within its own corporate walls. The chipmaker has been an XP-only shop throughout Vista’s life. In an interview here, Intel VP Stephen Smith said that Intel had some internal applications that weren’t Vista-compatible and the benefits of moving to Vista didn’t justify the costs.

By contrast, Smith said several hundred people inside Intel are already running Windows 7 on their corporate machines.

Playing a DVD, a Windows Vista Ultimate system, left showed an estimated battery life of 4.14 hours, but the Windows 7 Ultimate system on the right showed 5.5 hours.

The Secret

While dimming a screen’s brightness is one simple way to save power, Microsoft realizes that there are also other more advanced methods of reducing power consumption, such as increasing the system timer. By increasing the system timer from 1ms to 15.6ms, battery life can be increased by 10-percent. During moments of idle usage however, dynamically altering the system timer to improve battery life could make a lot of sense.

It was unexpectedly found during tests with the new Apple MacBooks that battery life was more than doubled when using the Apple Mac OS X than when compared to using Windows Vista. While wireless Internet browsing for example, a MacBook Air could achieve 4.98-hours of battery life, but when using Windows Vista on the same notebook, only 2.55-hours could be achieved. This result proves, Vista was weird.

MAC OS X Vs. Windows Vista as per AnandTech:

Note that this is the same hardware and with the same brightness settings under both OSes. Vista’s power management was set to Balanced and the display was set to never turn off under both OSes; the hard drives were free to spin down if possible.

Verdict – Minimum 25% Improvement in battery life over Vista (with dimming).

Here’s a Video which demonstrates this -

Sources: Cnet, Anandtech, Tomshardware

Every Lithium-ion battery (standard for mobiles, laptops) have life of few charge-discharge cycles. Ideally its 360 full charges. That means you battery can be full dsicharged 360 times before it dies, On average this results in average life span of 2 years. Earlier I posted “Secrets of Prolonging Life of Lithitum Ion battery“. In this one, Let’s discuss why are sealed batteries better.

However, The leader innovator of sealed batteries is Apple, which has often led the industry in introducing or removing components from computers. This time at WWDC, Apple unveiled two revised MacBook Pro laptops with higher-capacity, sealed-in batteries. In fact, Apple’s entire line of laptops now uses sealed batteries, except for one low-end MacBook model.

According to Apple, “This makes sense because sealing in the batteries lets the company make them larger, without adding heft to the laptops. Apple says the two models are the same size and weight as their predecessors, yet their battery capacity has grown by 33% and 46%, respectively. It has come up with some software technology that allows these sealed batteries to last up to five years in typical use. The company claims that is almost triple the industry average for removable batteries and is longer than the typical time consumers keep the computer, thus making it far less likely you’ll need to replace a dead battery. Apple says it is able to seal in bigger batteries without making the machines larger because the company can compensate by shedding the casings, internal housings and other components needed by replaceable power packs”.

Practical Tests

I’ve been testing the new Apple laptops, the 15-inch MacBook Pro, using my own harsh tests. The results? Excellent! The new Apple laptops scores among the highest battery lives between charges of any laptop I have ever tested with a battery that fits entirely inside the machine’s dimensions, without sticking out of the back or bottom and adding weight. Infact, one of my friends uses a 9Cell HP battery for extra juice. This inbuilt macbook Pro was able to beat it. He was left breathless.

Normal usage: MacBook 15″ lasted 5:14 hours which is close to Apple’s claim of around seven hours between charges, roughly a single charge in a normal full day use.

Apple claims that these sealed batteries lifecycle of  1,000 charges, and thus, last around five years. Second, if and when the sealed batteries do become unable to hold an adequate charge, the entire computer must be returned to Apple for a new battery. The company says that, if you do this at an Apple store, it’s a same-day process and, at least on the 13-inch model, the price of a new battery is the same as what Apple formerly charged for a new removable battery. But it’s still more of a hassle.

In the battery test, I turn off all power-saving features, Use the CPU to its 50% (1core full utilization) switch Wi-Fi network on, pump the screen to 100% brightness, and play music at 70% volume. That maximizes some of the biggest power hogs on a laptop. In normal use, a typical owner would likely use the power-saving features, turn the screen down a bit, have Wi-Fi off some of the time, and wouldn’t be running the hard disk constantly.

Note: These tests were on Nvidia graphics

The whole test proves that new MacBook Pros with sealed batteries can result in a very good experience for average users.

source: ATD, lesterelectrical

The guides walk you through the process of converting your battery-sucking gadgets to use AC power. Both guides require rolling up your sleeves, ripping the gadget apart, and doing some soldering—if using a soldering iron is new to you, LiffeHacker’ve got a beginner’s guide to help you out.

The first guide covers in detail how to use a switch, some wire, and an old cell phone charger to convert a baby swing to use AC power, and the second guide is a more broad, general overview of how to modify devices—but isn’t quite as detailed. If you’ve got any personal experience in modifying gadgets to use AC power instead of batteries.