[Discuss] My God! It's Full of Batteries!

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

On 03/16/2012 06:43 PM, Richard Pieri wrote:
> On Mar 16, 2012, at 4:08 PM, Nilanjan Palit wrote:
>> Chips with more features or faster frequencies don't weigh more :-)
> They do.  The A5X CPU in the The New iPad is physically larger than the A5 CPU in the iPad 2.  Both use the same process.  Bigger + same = heavier.
>
> But seriously, the new display panel is slimmer and lighter, but the new battery packs (there are three in each The New iPad) are thicker and heavier.  That's how Apple did it "without making the thing significantly heavier".  The The New iPad is about 50 grams heavier and 0.6 mm thicker than its predecessor.
>
The desirability of the tablet computers are their portability. My
mother, for instance, has a Kindle, but she won't put it in a case,
because it makes it too heavy. While some of the internal components are
heavier, it is the battery that adds a significant amount of weight, to
tablets and laptops. This is why we are limited by the current
technology. The new Lithium-Air batteries are one technology that should
help to reduce weight, but those are not expected in production until
about 2020. I suspect that carbon-nano-tubes won't be available for at
least that long. Until we can get more powerful, lighter batteries, the
tablets are not going to significantly replace the laptops until we can
reduce the weight of the batteries.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
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