Dongxu hasn’t yet released any information about when the battery might be fit for installation in consumer electronics, but engineers have been excited about the prospect of graphene batteries for some time.
Graphene is a lattice network of carbon atoms, which is more conductive than silicon and stronger than steel. It is extremely lightweight, highly flexible and considered to be eco-friendly.Its application in consumer electronics goes beyond batteries. The material could be used for everything from flexible screens to wearable devices, as well as more sensitive heart rate and fingerprint sensors.Samsung announced a major breakthrough in the production of graphene in 2014. In collaboration with Sungkyunkwan University, the tech giant uncovered a new method of growing large area, single crystal wafer scale graphene. It’s the first step in creating large graphene crystals while ensuring the material’s conductive properties are maintained.
Last year, British tech startup Intelligent Energy produced a hyrdrogen-powered battery that could charge an iPhone for a week. The company was believed to be working closely with Apple, the Telegraph reported.Make no mistake about it. The 2016 Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition laptop is wonderful. It's fast, its display is gorgeous, and, at less than three pounds, you can carry and code with it anywhere. But, oh, that price tag!This is a really, sweet design. The display bezel is only a quarter of an inch thick. This is as close to a real edge-to-edge display than I've ever seen. The 13.3 inch display itself is also sweet. It's a 3,200×1,800 touchscreen. For those playing along at home that's 280 pixels per inch. That's 40 more than my prized 2015 Chromebook Pixel and 60 more than a MacBook Pro with Retina.
The display is powered by Intel's Iris 540 GPU. It looks, in a word, great. At 13.3 inches, the screen is a bit small for my taste, but I'm not complaining.There's one oddity here. To maximize the screen real-estate while leaving as little bezel as possible, the 720p Webcam ended up in the bottom-left corner of the display. It matters less in practice than I thought it would, but it's still a little odd.The system itself is powered by a dual-core, 2.2GHz 6th Generation Intel Core i7-6560U Skylake processor. This is one fast system. It's meant for developers and they need all the speed they can get.It boasts 16GBs of DDR3 RAM and a half a terabyte, PCIe solid state drive (SSD). This also helps make it a fast system.
How fast? Using the installed Ubuntu Linux 14.04.3 with its developer tools I was able to compile its Linux 3.19 kernel in about three minutes. If I'd optimized my tools I think I could have dropped that to less than two minutes.Of course, you can compile Linux faster. To really compile in a hurry try an Intel Xeon E5 chip. But on a laptop? I don't think you're going to do much better.The XPS 13 offers just two USB 3.0 ports; a Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 Type-C port; and a DisplayPort 1.2 video output port. It also comes with an SD card reader and an audio jack. I'm not sure what the Thunderbolt port is doing there -- does anyone use Thunderbolt now? -- but the USB 3.1 side of the chipset will get used.
There are no HDMI or Ethernet ports. On the other hand, with the built-in Intel 8260 Wi-Fi chipset maybe you don't need the Ethernet port anyway. The built-in Wi-Fi supports both 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.1.
The Wi-Fi is much better in this model than it was in earlier versions of the Dell XPS 13. These models, with their Broadcom Wi-Fi chipsets, often proved troublesome.The keyboard is a pleasure to use. I'm not crazy about the touchpad, but then I've never met one I really liked. Give me a ThinkPad TrackPoint any day.Dell claims the XPS 13, with its 56wHR, 4-Cell Battery, has about a 12-hour battery life. Guess what? It does. I was impressed too.The hardware is only part of the story here. Besides using Ubuntu 14.04 as its default operating system, this system is designed for developers. If you just need a system to roam the web or to do day in and day out office work, look elsewhere. This is a laptop by programmers for programmers.
Dell will be offering the XPS 13 with the latest long-term support version of Ubuntu 16.04 later this year. In the meantime, you can also update the existing model to Ubuntu 16.04 or any other desktop Linux distribution that strikes your fancy such as Mint 18.The price reflects this high end goal. An ordinary XPS 13 with a Core i3 processor and Windows 10 Home starts at $799. The entry-level XPS 13 Developer Edition, with 8GBs of RAM, a 256GB SSD, and an Intel HD Graphics 520 chipset costs $1099. The next model up features Intel Iris Graphics 540 and costs $1649.99. Finally, the top-of-the-line, which is what I reviewed, comes with 16GBs of RAM and a 512GB SSD and will cost you $2,079.The Windows 10 Mobile market is pretty small, and possible 1-2 million units per quarter. That’s not just a small segment of the phone market (less than 1%) but also a small fraction of the PC market (less than 2%).Yet Windows 10 Mobile is much closer to the PC market than the phone market, sharing a common platform, services and with Continuum even user interface. In fact many are calling Windows 10 Mobile phones just another PC form factor, with devices like the HP Elite X3 being the best example, morphing via accessories from a phone to a laptop to a desktop.
However there is still a hard separation between Windows and Windows 10 Mobile, that being the ability to run legacy x86 apps which is still the main reason Windows has not been replaced by Android or iOS devices. Windows 10 Mobile does not benefit from any such protection. At the same time Windows PCs suffer from not having a real presence in phones, leading to falling shipments year on year.The solution is to break down the barriers which separate the two operating systems and really make Windows 10 phones just another place to run Windows, similar to how Windows 10 tablets now run full Windows, vs the failed Windows RT operating system.With the low-end Windows 10 market more or less decimated, and volume in general really small, and Microsoft targeting the enterprise market in general in any case, the reasons which held back the move are not really relevant any more.
Higher price is no longer a major factor, as Microsoft is targeting the more cost-tolerant enterprise market. Battery life is also much less of an issue, due to the ability to include chunky batteries in these larger, more expensive devices, such as the more than 4000 mAh battery in the HP Elite X3. We expect to charge our laptops every 6-8 hours in any case, with the handset possibly jumping from dock to dock as users move around. Software optimised for the phone form factor will obviously come via UWP apps.Of course issues remain, such as poorly developed LTE modems for x86 and low power chipsets also being underpowered compared to their equivalent ARM versions. These are issues a bold company may address by designing their own processor, much like Apple and Samsung has done.
The advantage would be massive – the messaging would be crystal clear around Windows phone – you buy one to use as your only device, which can serve all your needs, from phone to desktop PC and all form factors in between. Some apps may work better on a big than a small screen, but all apps are accessible no matter where you are, be they Photoshop or a UWP version of Skype. Microsoft would only work on one version of the OS, not one and a half. Sales may even grow from 1 million to 3 million, boosting the PC market, and if a user really wanted Pokemon Go they could run Bluestacks.
In summary, with Windows 10 Mobile sales now so low that Microsoft is not even giving any sales numbers any more, its time for Microsoft to exit the smartphone market and to reboot the OS by making it simply another Windows 10 form factor. At this point Microsoft simply nothing to lose and quite a lot to gain.Would our readers be prepared to pay $600 for their next Windows Phone if it ran on a Core M processor and let you replace your current laptop? I know I would.
Why would this be better than seperate devices? For most it will not be, but for a small segment of the PC market it would be ideal. That small segment is likely larger than the currently tiny ARM windows 10 mobile market.
The Windows 10 desktop UI would not make sense on Mobile: Windows 10 desktop already includes a tablet mode which hides the desktop and which could be further improved for smaller screens.
Which processor is powerful enough for a laptop but low power enough for a smartphone? Intel’s Core M3 2016 processor only sips 4.5 watt (only about 50% more than a Snapdragon 810) and is powerful enough for Apple’s Macbook.
This would kill the motivation for UWP apps. Selling less than 10 million Windows 10 Mobile smartphones already does this job very well.