Oh! Gizmo

By David Ponce

Proving once again that it’s mighty difficult to actually own a cake while eating it at the same time, company Sion Power is claiming to have developed a battery that greatly outlasts even the most efficient of today’s Lithim-Ion powerpacks. There is, however, one major drawback that just might be a dealbreaker.

Let me explain.

Sion Power’s batteries work on a different chemical reaction than Li-Ion altogether: Lithim-Sulfur. And these babies pack some serious juice, capable of keeping an HP TC1000 tablet PC alive for an entire day. Considering most batteries die out after roughly 6 hours, this is a heck of an improvement. There are even talks of some sort of involvement with Intel, though I don’t have enough concrete information about that to even speculate. So, why aren’t people lining up at Sion’s doors to buy these?

Well, for one, they’re much heavier than standard Li-Ion batteries (though I don’t know by how much). But worse yet, they have a life cycle of only 60 charges. And that is a heck of a problem. The battery is not in production just yet. It’s slated to come out sometime in early 2008. So hopefully by then, things will look a little better.

[Sion Power] VIA [Gadget Buzz]