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Improvements in smartphone battery life over the next several years will likely result from larger batteries and enhancements aimed at reducing power consumption from device components.

Smartphone performance has increased exponentially in recent years due to a combination of Moore’s Law, new standards, and advances in equipment and software. But consumers yearning for longer battery life¹ have continually been disappointed—and that’s not likely to change anytime soon. Deloitte predicts that the rechargeable lithium ion (Li‑Ion) battery technology used in smartphones will improve only modestly through the end of this decade. Insofar as battery life does improve in next-generation devices (perhaps on the order of 15 percent), it will likely result from an increase in the average size of smartphones, which allows for higher-capacity batteries,² and enhancements to the components that draw down power.

Muted progress in smartphone battery capacity is not for lack of trying. Rather, it is extremely challenging to develop a battery chemistry suitable for the highly diverse environments in which billions of consumer electronic devices are used. Even if there were an imminent breakthrough, it is highly unlikely a new battery type could be easily “dropped into” existing devices, and it would likely require different charging technology and packaging, among other changes.

Instead, device designers are looking to enable more hours of usage between charges by addressing the three main drains on battery life for the typical smartphone: the screen, the processor, and the radio transmitter.

The screen. As the average smartphone screens get bigger, they will use more power; however, larger devices also include a larger battery, with energy capacity increasing at a faster pace than screen size. Thus, a version of the same phone with a screen 20 percent larger may last up to 40 percent longer between charges.

The processor. The energy efficiency of most new smartphone processors is continually improving, even as processing power increases by 30 to 40 percent, and the first smartphones with 3 GHz processors are expected to trickle onto the market in late 2015. Software and hardware designers, anticipating consumer demand, will inevitably find applications for increased performance.

The radio. During the past two decades, the energy required to transmit or receive each bit of data has fallen by about 30 to 40 percent per year.4 Sending a 100 KB photo using a 4G phone should use less power than using a 3G phone because 4G phones transmit at a faster rate, meaning that the radio is active for less time.5 Additionally, as the number of cellular network base stations increases, the distance between phones and base stations decreases, resulting in reduced power usage. As a result, smartphone users who predominantly connect to Wi‑Fi should experience longer battery life than those relying mainly on the mobile network.

Of course, faster transmit rates likely result in users sending more higher-resolution photos and posting more video, requiring greater radio usage. Smartphones and their batteries are a victim of their own success: If they weren’t so useful, we would use them less frequently. But taken as a whole, these enhancements will likely increase smartphone usage time between battery charges, although not by as much as many hope.

—by Paul Lee, head of global technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) research, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited.