Survey after survey reveals there is one thing consumers wish manufacturers would change about their gadgets. And year after year, gadget makers make only tepid gestures toward giving it to us.

It’s better battery life.

Maybe you have heard battery technology is hard. And that’s true. Unlike microchips, there is no Moore’s Law for batteries. If the amount of energy a new battery technology can store goes up even a small amount in a year, it’s considered progress. That leaves makers of smartphones, in particular, struggling heroically to reduce the energy consumption of every component in their devices.

Yet even as displays become sharper and microchips faster, we are stuck charging our phones every chance we get.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There’s a simple enough solution. It requires a company brave enough to persuade users that one of the things we’ve come to expect from phones and other gadgets—that every year, they become thinner and lighter—is a trend that has outlived its usefulness.