Sony Making Smartphone Batteries With 40 Percent More Capacity.

While the industry struggles to make any major advancements to the ubiquitous lithium-ion batteries, Sony may have found a different combination to substantially increase energy density. According to a media report, the Japanese conglomerate is working on two battery combinations to replace lithium-ion batteries.

Sony is working on lithium-sulphur and magnesium-sulphur batteries that offer a 40 percent gain in density by volume, reportsJapanese newspaper Nikkei. The company is currently aiming to make these batteries commercially available in 2020. The report added that smartphones will be the first to benefit from the new advancement.

The lithium-ion batteries, which have been commercially produced for more than two decades now, has almost reached the threshold limit for energy density. This has left smartphone manufacturers and others with no other choice than to accommodate a larger battery to stuff more energy into a device.

The challenge is that it has proven difficult to make a battery that could maintain its charge capacity through hundreds of recharges. The process of testing these technologies takes a long time as well. So, has Sony cracked the puzzle? Not really, it appears.

The report added that Sony is yet to solve the technical challenges and that the lithium-sulphur batteries are still prone to heat generation or ignition. This is not the first time a company has claimed to have found a better battery solution. But over the years, we haven't really seen any of these advancements make it to the finished product. In June,Samsung unveiled technology that could double lithium-ion battery capacity. But we haven't heard anything about it since. If Sony manages to overcome all the challenges, the industry at large would benefit from the advancements.

Virtual reality set to transform filmmaking

Chris Milk stepped onto a TED Conference stage and took the audience on an awe-inducing trip into the future of movies. While much of the early attention on virtual reality has focused on use of the immersive technology in video games, Milk and his US startup Vrse are using it to transform storytelling and filmgoing. "We have just started to scratch the surface of the true power of virtual reality," Milk said. "It's not a video game peripheral. It connects humans to other humans in a profound way... I think virtual reality has the potential to actually change the world." He had everyone in the Vancouver audience at TED , which ended Friday, hold Google Cardboard viewers to their eyes for what was billed as the world's collective virtual reality experience. Google Cardboard gear is literally that -- cardboard

Explained: Camera Improvements in the New HTC 10

With the HTC 10, the Taiwanese company is promising to undo the past wrongs in the cameras of its previous flagship phones. The camera has long a weak point in HTC devices. At first, HTC sacrificed image resolution in the M8 and made the size of individual pixels larger to capture more light (what HTC called Ultrapixel). But the resulting 4 megapixel images were often fuzzy, especially when cropped or enlarged. To fix the issue, in its next flagship - the M9 - HTC went with smaller individual pixels in a 20-megapixel camera last year, but it still underperformed in extreme situations, such as indoors and close-ups. In the HTC 10, the company attempts to strike a balance with larger individual pixels (1.55µm), but not as large as before and a 12 megapixel sensor in its camera coupled with a ƒ/1.8 lens. HTC accepts that in the imaging performance in the M9 was not up to the kind of spec of what they really like to see in a flagship. HTC is giving a slight boost to the selfi...

Freedom 251: 30,000 Units Sold, Components for Up to 2.5 Million Will Be Imported

Ringing Bells, the makers of the Rs. 251 smartphone - the Freedom 251 - confirmed to Gadgets 360 on Tuesday that it has still only accepted payments for 30,000 units of the phone. It also added that the components for these phones will be imported, and only assembled in India, not made here. Ringing Bells stopped accepting orders on February 19, and claims to have received over 70 million registrations. The company President and Director both repeatedly stated that the price of the phone would be made possible through economies of scale, and making the phone in India to cut out import costs. Economies of scale? However, in a discussion with Gadgets 360 the company revealed that it had only sold 30,000 units of the phone on day one. The company has now confirmed that it has not sent out the payment emails to anyone else who registered - "we were working out details of cash on delivery, which we are announcing now, so we will be sending emails to the first 2.5...

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