It’s 2024 and my smartphone battery still won’t last a day: Here’s why

Smartphones have evolved significantly, with powerful processors, vibrant displays and amazing cameras. Still, there’s one area where they still fall short: battery life.

So why, after all these years, is my smartphone still struggling to make it through the day?

Battery technology is not evolving as we thought

It’s 2024 and we’re still relying on lithium-ion batteries, a technology that’s been around for decades. While energy density (the amount of energy a battery can store relative to its size) has improved by 5-8% every year, you won’t see it in actual battery life because smartphone power demands have grown even faster.

Lithium-ion batteries are also approaching their theoretical energy density limits, which means we can only achieve such optimization. Alternatives like graphene and solid state batteries exist and would provide at least 2-3 times longer battery life. However, their production costs are higher than lithium-ion, which is why we don’t see them in mainstream phones yet, especially as smartphone companies try to cut costs as much as possible.

Smartphones are becoming more and more powerful

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Smartphone processors are exponentially more powerful and efficient than a decade ago. Today, these tiny silicon chips are capable of handling demanding tasks like real-time AI calculations, console-level gaming graphics, and 8K video editing that were once reserved only for powerful gaming PCs.

Take the Apple A18 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. They integrate multiple components such as CPU, GPU, AI processors and 5G modems into a single chipset, leading to increased power requirements.

Another factor contributing to poor battery life is the increasing complexity of software and operating systems. Over time, applications and system software have grown significantly and require much more computing power. Every newly released app has a lot of artificial intelligence built into it. This, combined with background processes such as syncing, notifications and location tracking, further drains the battery.

Take WhatsApp and Instagram for example. These apps are packed with features that most users don’t know about or never use. It’s feature overload, with layers of features hidden within other features that often go unnoticed. Now extend this feature to all other applications.

Brighter and higher refresh rate

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Smartphone displays have improved significantly over time. Now we enjoy bigger, brighter and higher pixel density screens. The refresh rate has also jumped from 60Hz to 120Hz or even 165Hz on some devices.

Higher refresh rates and pixel density consume more power. For example, a 120Hz display refreshes 120 times per second, which increases screen power consumption and forces the processor to work harder to render more frames. The same goes for higher resolutions.

And that’s not all – we now have foldable phones with multiple displays that further eat into battery life. I am not against them; in fact, I really like foldable phones because they strike a great balance between portability and screen size. However, we cannot deny their influence on battery life.

More than one camera lens

If there’s one area where smartphones have really made a leap, it’s in their cameras. The image quality of these portable devices is so impressive that you might find yourself leaving your bulky DSLR at home without a second thought.

This improvement is due to two key factors: the use of more camera systems and advances in image processing.

Every phone is now equipped with at least two and often up to five types of lenses, such as telephoto, macro and wide-angle lenses. However, these multiple lenses consume significantly more power than a single lens.

Also, as I mentioned earlier, every image you take goes through several pre-processing steps like lens correction and noise reduction and post-processing steps like HDR, brightness and contrast adjustments before delivering the final result.

These steps put a lot of stress on the processor, which leads to battery drain. So, if you’ve ever wondered why your phone heats up while taking pictures, now you know.