Prototype internal hydrogen fuel cell powers iPhone 6 battery life for six days

What happens when insert a hydrogen fuel cell into an iPhone 6 Well, let’s just that one day battery suddenly sprouts into six day battery. Recently, British power products developer Intelligent Energy has seamlessly integrated a hydrogen fuel cell into chassis of the standard iPhone 6 with minimal modification save for adding vents to discharge water vapor. The company won’t divulge whether it’s working with Apple on the next generation of batteries for its products, but reporters have claimed to witness prototype Macbook Air and iPhone devices lying around.

Intelligent Energy’s current hardware implementation is unique in that the hydrogen fuel cell does not replace the existing lithium ion battery, but merely supplements it. Of course, this type of setup raises multiple questions, namely how the device’s refills are handled and how much it costs to top off the fuel cells. The fuel cell is expected to cost a few dollars, making the prospect of carrying a full week’s charge an incredible dollar-per-hour value — basically contemporary issues faced by the fuel cell market as a whole.

Intelligent Energy has already adopted the technology in an external recharger united called the Upp , that refuels through the headphone jack, but the device lacks an early adopter market as convincing the market to adopt an external power pack is proving unfruitful when the wall power is readily available. Such a device is obviously useful under the right circumstances — such as traveling through remote areas — but is not critical to everyday life.

Assuming the company has discovered a means of internally integrating this technology as its reports claim, then we’re looking at a game changer for the consumer electronics market. It may take a number of years for the smart phone manufacturers to seize the idea, but when it does takes off, we’ll have the usability of a smartphone with the battery life of the Nokia 3310.

Considering the original lithium ion battery remains intact, Intelligent Energy must resolve the water vent situation to avoid creating a mini-pocket bomb.

Source: ExtremeTech