Back in 2012, four MIT students lead by Professor Donald Sadoway, created a battery technology that could function without problems in extreme heat and in normal conditions. The invention was entered in the very first MIT Accelerate contest, which the team won and earned for themselves prize money of $12,000. Professor Donald Sadoway who is also co-inventor of SolidEnergy’s technology, has also helped to invent a tech for liquid metal battery, something which one day is expected to “be used as a more consistent supply of renewable energy on the electric grid”.

SoldEnergy has since gone on to win:

DOE Clean Energy Prize and NASA Space Commercialization Prize at Rice Business Plan Competition

MIT Clean Energy Prize Deployment and Infrastructure Category

MIT $100K Launch Energy Track

Grand prize winner runner-up at the first ever DOE National clean Energy Business Plan Competition

Most Promising prize at Rice Alliance Energy Venue

Mass CEC Catalyst Award

2014 R&D 100 Award

In January of 2015 we were made aware that SolidEnergy is focused on making a battery module for Google’s Ara modular smartphone. In an interview with Forbes, SolidEnergy’s founder and CEO Dr. Qichao Hu said, “Our battery basically makes the Project Ara phone more practical, right now, one of the major challenges with this phone is that the battery life is too short.”

With the use of a thin metal anode which multiplies the battery’s energy density to 1,200 watts-hour per liter, SolidEnergy has managed to make batteries half the size of the average smartphone battery to hold the same capacity.

Ara Modular Smartphone Current Battery Problems

If you have been paying close attention to Google’s boot up videos of Ara, then you would have noticed that in every single video the 2×2 battery module doubles in thickness when compared to other modules, and it bulges out at the back of the device. From this it was pretty obvious that Google has not been able to make a battery module that is the same size of a 2 x 2 module, and capable of powering the device (the 2×2 module is the largest Ara module in terms of size), and to make things a little worse, in some of the videos the battery module was missing from the device.

But why is the battery module missing?

Could it be because the battery module is always dead?

Or possibly because Google doesn’t want viewers to notice that they don’t have a battery module that is of normal size?

Google hasn’t made known the capacity of the battery module that they have been using to test Ara, but considering that the size of Ara is 68 x 141 x 9.7 mm, I estimate that a 2 x 2 module is about 47 X 47 X 3.35 mm. With the bulge of the current battery module I estimate the battery module to be 47 x 47 x 6.45 mm.

A standard Li-lon battery with similar thickness at 50 x 55 mm has a capacity of 1850 mAh, so I would estimate the current Ara battery module to be roughly 1486 mAh. Samsung’s Galaxy S6 has a 2550 mAh battery and with average usage, it is able to get you through the day. Considering that we only see Ara being booted and user navigating through menus, we would all agree that a full charge should never run out before, during or after any interview (this would not have happened with a regular smartphone). So another assumption would be that the technology that is required for Ara to function, requires allot of power.

Possible Solutions

Create A Battery That can last 5x longer – Google’s ATAP team was working on a new battery tech that could improve battery life by up to 5x on mobile devices, but sadly it wasn’t successful and Google scrapped the project.

– Google’s ATAP team was working on a new battery tech that could improve battery life by up to 5x on mobile devices, but sadly it wasn’t successful and Google scrapped the project. Use Battery pack modules – Module developers are sure to create modules that can extend the battery life of Ara, none such module have been reported to be in the manufacturing process, but we are pretty sure these modules will be made. Battery packs are a very common accessory for current smartphones! While having some kind of module to extend battery life is great, Google still needs to make a battery module capable of powering the device for the same period of time when compared to an average smartphone, this battery module also needs to be the same size of a regular 2 x 2 module (the current battery module which bulges out is unacceptable and will have negative effects on the success of the device).

– Module developers are sure to create modules that can extend the battery life of Ara, none such module have been reported to be in the manufacturing process, but we are pretty sure these modules will be made. Battery packs are a very common accessory for current smartphones! While having some kind of module to extend battery life is great, Google still needs to make a battery module capable of powering the device for the same period of time when compared to an average smartphone, this battery module also needs to be the same size of a regular 2 x 2 module (the current battery module which bulges out is unacceptable and will have negative effects on the success of the device). Improve the current technology within Ara to consume less energy – Project Ara’s firmware lead Marti Bolivar, mentioned in an interview with Slashdot that Google is working on the final version of Ara to be called Spiral 3. Google plans on making allot of improvements to this version of the device; we all hope that these improvements will include better battery performance as compared to the Spiral 2 prototype.

If Google Does in fact manage to get Ara to consume the same amount of energy when compared to smartphones that are on the market today, or even if Ara becomes more energy efficient, there is still the problem of the battery module’s capacity at its current size. Google cannot release Ara to the public with the bulging battery module that we see them using, and reducing the thickness would result in a battery module of roughly 743-1000 mAh which is insufficient.

This leaves me to believe that SolidEnergy’s revolutionary battery technology which they plan on using to create a battery module for Ara, is absolutely vital to Ara’s success.