The Sony Mobile team is in a seriously confident mood at the moment. Fresh from talking up its history of smartphone world-firsts in a post that suggests the firm may be gearing up to unleash the world's first 5G phone, it's now taken to its blog to talk up its "best-in-class battery performance", saying that it is aiming to create a smartphone battery that lasts for an entire week. The iPhone users on team T3 currently struggle to eke their battery out for an entire day.
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In the post, Xperia hardware engineer Daisuke Haruki and Xperia software engineer Hidenari Shinoto share how they work to optimise the battery life of Xperia handsets, before going on to reveal what they are working on next.
Improving the battery life of a smartphone comes down to two things: better engineered, higher capacity batteries; and software that enables the phone to sip power rather than gulp it down like a thirsty camel.
Speaking about developing the Xperia XZ2, Shinoto explains: "Essentially it involved optimising software to ensure programs run as efficiently as possible."
Haruki adds: "From a hardware point of view, we had to find the perfect equilibrium between battery size and capacity."
So what's next for Xperia batteries? Dare we imagine a smartphone battery that lasts a week?
Apparently we should.
Asked "Will it one day be possible to create a smartphone battery that lasts for a week?" Haruki rather boldly replies, "That’s our aim, to make the longest battery life possible. Every day we are studying the handsets and exploring new ways to make our smartphones even more efficient.
"Since power saving gives freedom to designs and functions, we are looking to make the lowest-power usage handset."
Back in May, Sony said it had 'Key Issues' to fix with its new Xperia phones. The battery looks to be the third issue on that list. The first was ensuring that the phone would make the leap from 4G to 5G, and the second, as T3 reported on 30 May, was building a next-generation smartphone camera.
Improved battery life is something that smartphone users have long been crying out for. With the advent of 5G phones – including, seemingly, the new Xperia XZ3 – we'll be doing even more battery-intensive things such as live streaming video on social media, watching 4K movies, and instigating ever more elaborate backlashes against things that have upset us on Twitter.
Three down, six to go in Sony's Smartphone Business Bingo
No doubt we'll hear lots more from the Sony Mobile Team about the 2019 flagship Xperia which we expect to be announced either just before or at Mobile World Congress in February 2019.
