Researchers at the University of Cambridge have identified that a group of materials called niobium tungsten oxides could offer faster battery charging that could substantially accelerate the adoption of electric cars. The material could also significantly reduce charge times for batteries in electrical devices like smartphones and laptops, allowing full charge replenishment in minutes.

Current batteies’ limitations

How fast a battery can be charged depends, in part, upon the rate at which the positively charged lithium ion particles can move towards a negatively charged electrode where they are then stored as energy. The difficulty in making batteries charge more quickly is the speed at which these lithium ions migrate, usually through ceramic materials.

By changing from ceramics to niobium tungsten oxides could allow lithium ions to pass through at an exceedingly high rate, drastically reducing batteries’ charging time.

Using niobium tungsten oxides in batteries

“Niobium tungsten oxides are fundamentally different,” said Kent Griffith, first author on the study published in the journal Nature.

First discovered in 1965, niobium tungsten oxides have a rigid, open structure and larger particle sizes than many other materials commonly used in batteries. The movement of the lithium ions through is measured using a technology similar to that found in an MRI scanner. The research discovered that lithium ions moved through the material hundreds of times faster than they do through typical ceramic electrode materials.

On top of this, the material is plentiful, cheap and easy to produce. “These oxides are easy to make and don’t require additional chemicals or solvents,” said Griffith.

Clare Grey, professor of materials chemistry at the University of Cambridge and senior author on the paper, said the next step will be to optimise the use of this material in a full battery, which can be cycled for the time and length needed for electric vehicles. “For example, electric buses where you may want to charge the bus very fast at the bus stop,” she added.

Dan Brett, professor of electrochemical engineering at University College London, who was not involved in the work  said, “The discovery is very exciting in terms of what it does for battery performance. The really clever thing about the work is the insight into the mechanism and ability to measure how fast the lithium ions travel through the material.”

Brett continued, “This technique will also allow these materials to be further optimised, so we can look forward to future improvements in power, energy and lifetime.”

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Taiwanese electronics company Huawei Technologies Ltd. (HTC), and Swiss-based Sirin Labs are both introducing blockchain smartphones.

HTC

HTC’s Exodus blockchain smartphone, which it is believed will be priced at around $1,000, and is reported to have “tens of thousands” of reservations globally. The smartphone, from the world’s third largest phone manufacturer, will be released this year, will come with a built-in (offline) wallet for storing cryptocurrencies, and will act as a computer node in a blockchain network.

What Is Blockchain?

Blockchain is an incorruptible peer-to-peer network (a kind of ledger) that allows multiple parties to transfer value in a secure and transparent way. Blockchain’s Co-Founder Nic Carey describes Blockchain as being like “a big spreadsheet in the cloud that anyone can use, but no one can erase or modify”. Blockchain is the technology at the heart of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, is open-source, and free.

Why A Blockchain Phone?

Giving a phone a blockchain element means that it has access to blockchain applications such as a crypto wallet, secure exchange access, encrypted communications and a P2P resource sharing ecosystems for payment and apps. It can also be used for cryptocurrency mining.

The built-in wallet for the HTC phone for example, will enable it to store bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital tokens.

Sirin Labs – The Finney Phone

The other blockchain smartphone, which is likely to be launched after HTC’s, is the ‘Finney’, named after the late bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney.

This smartphone, which also has a $1,000 price tag, has been described as an “ultra-secure blockchain smartphone”, and has been specifically designed to get around what Sirin Labs believe to be 2 main obstacles to mass market acceptance – security and user experience.

Sirin Labs even launched an initial coin offering / ICO (crowd funding from early backers of tokens for a new cryptocurrency) to fund the Finney. This resulted in over $157 million being raised.

The Big Advantage – The OS

Sirin claims that its big advantage with the Finney is not so much the phone, but more the Operating System (OS) that it claims, thanks to partnerships it is making, will soon be included in phones by other top OEM phone developers.

Security

In terms of how secure the phones are, the main question will be how both companies will keep sensitive cryptocurrency data secure. For example, unless a phone is in flight mode, there’s always a connection of some kind, and that offers a lot more attack surfaces than something like a USB stick that’s only occasionally connected.

Niche Product For Rich Enthusiasts?

Some critics have said that a blockchain smartphone is too much of a niche product that may just appeal to enthusiasts and speculators rather than a mass market, and that most people may struggle to understand what blockchain is and how / why they should use cryptocurrencies.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

For HTC, many see this as being a way for the company to find a way back into the smartphone market, where it’s been struggling in recent times, but this time with a differentiated product that is a market first, ahead of competitors.

For Sirin Labs, it could also be a way to get into a new section of the market ahead of the competition, but many are sceptical as to whether the Finney will get the mass market acceptance that Sirin Labs hopes.

Most business people in the UK, for example, may be unlikely to see why they would need a blockchain phone with a crypto-currency wallet as part of their daily working life. If they’re going to spend £1,000+, they may be more likely to opt for new models of more familiar phones with more standard features e.g. iPhone or Samsung Galaxy.

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eBay has launched Image Search in the UK, an AI-based technology that means you can now enter a photo into the search box to help find the product you’re looking for.

Smart Phone Camera/Photo Search

With so many of us now using smart-phones, this innovative new feature means that users can take a photo on their phone of a product they’re inspired by and interested in, and use the machine learning technology that’s been added to eBay’s 1.1 billion item catalogue to quickly search for that product.

Technology Push at eBay

This latest addition to eBay’s search is part of a general push by eBay to bolt-on more technologies and forge alliances to increase the reach of its platform and to take the fight to competitors.

For example, eBay recently collaborated with worldwide media and entertainment company for culture and tech ‘Mashable’ so that an eBay widget could be introduced into Mashable. The widget allows Mashable’s audience to see and use a small eBay shop window overlaid on the page, and populated by products that are featured in Mashable articles, thereby allowing people to instantly buy what they they’re reading about. The benefit for eBay (according to eBay) is that eBay’s marketing team will be able to use it to better understand the factors that matter most to buyers making purchases off the eBay platform e.g. seller reputation and delivery time, and to use learned consumer insights from the pilot to deliver scalable solutions that accelerate eBay’s growth.

Smart Search Benefits

The sheer size of eBay’s catalogue means that it can sometimes take a long time for users to find the item they’re looking for, particularly if that item is very difficult to describe. Also, the watching and waiting aspect of eBay, its reputation as an auction site, and its lack of ability to actively engage have appeared to put it slightly at odds with a generation who simply want to quickly find what they’re looking for via their smart-phone, and purchase it. eBay also needed to find a way to get the most out of the vast number of user-generated images and item data that they’d accumulated through the years, and to capitalise on the instant product inspiration that people get e.g. from their social media feeds.

It is believed that the Image Search feature will be able to address all of these challenges, and will allow users to quickly find what they’re looking for while on the move. It may also encourage more seller to take to platform.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

This is another illustration of how AI / machine learning is being put to practical and value-adding use as a medium for brand / company growth and user convenience. For businesses in retail such as for fashion and apparel, this new feature could bring increased sales and brand recognition, and could help new lines to generate sales rapidly.

For eBay, this innovative search feature could kill many birds with one stone towards the aim of delivering scalable solutions that can accelerate eBay’s growth.

Visual search is a growing trend, particularly in retail e.g. ASOS, Zalando and John Lewis have adopted visual search into their apps to save customers time, to make themselves more socially discoverable, to drive up-sell activity, and to ultimately increase app revenue. Visual search technology is likely to find its way onto many more platforms, retail websites and apps yet.

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After its official launch, planned for next year, it has been reported that the new Samsung Galaxy X smartphone could be priced at as much as £1,400!

More Than The iPhone X

This will mean that the world-first flexible-screened, foldable smartphone will be entering the market with a price that’s one-third higher than even the Apple iPhone X which was criticised by some for its £999 price tag.

The high price is thought to reflect the high R&D budget that went into its development, and as a premium for its innovative features.

The Galaxy X has essentially been 7 years in the making, as a prototype version of the foldable phone was shown by Samsung back in 2011.

What’s So Special About It?

The Galaxy X has two inside panels and one outside panel with the two inside panels forming the 7.3-inch OLED screen when the phone is unfolded, thereby giving the user a much larger screen area. As well as having a large screen area, the resolution is expected to be 4K (3840×2160 pixels), thereby giving it high-res when folded.

It is also rumoured that the new phone will have a dual-camera at the rear with one of the latest Qualcomm Snapdragon processors.

LG Also Going Foldable?

There have been rumours that Samsung’s rival LG is also planning to release foldable devices that could feature more advanced outward folding tech than Samsung.

To Be Shown February 2019?

Even though Samsung investors were informed that the new Galaxy X would be launched in 2018, it now looks likely that it won’t actually be shown until the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February 2019.

Production Problems

Part of the delay in the production of a commercial version of the Galaxy X from the first sighting of its prototype 7 years ago is thought to be down to production problems in the development of the flexible plastic screens.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

So much of business is now conducted using smartphones, and innovative smartphones that provide the user with features that have a real value are likely to be popular. It seems that the main benefits of the Galaxy X are that it will offer flexibility and convenience to the user with a screen area between a phone and a tablet (that can be folded), and for the initial interest factor that being seen to own and use one will create.

For the manufacturers, Galaxy X also provides a way to compete with Apple and some of its other larger competitors such as LG, and to be first to the marketplace with a foldable, flexible smartphone.