LG have been taking a long hard look at how to make smartwatches last longer, a common issue with most currently on the market struggling to even last a day. But you are asking a lot from a tiny device, there is a finite amount of space you can use before the watch gets too big.
This is not helped by the fact we make rectangular batteries and try to cram them into a circular watch, let’s make rectangular watches, wait no that’s stupid, Circular batteries! Close enough anyway. For the increasingly large number of circular smartwatches on the market, there’s one simple change that could yield a quarter more power, don’t use rectangular batteries. It is literally that simple, Occam’s razor prevails again stop trying to fit rectangular batteries into round bodies.
LG Chem, the battery-making division of Korean manufacturer LG, is releasing a hexagonal battery aimed at circular watches… as I said close enough, claiming that by filling empty space with extra battery, you’ll get more time away from the charger. Take for examples sake the Moto 360’s logic board in iFixit’s teardown, you can see a ton of wasted space around the edges of that rectangular battery which could be better filled.
Whether it turns out to give an extra 25 percent time will tell, but the concept is there, I have to ask though why not make them circular? I’m sure theres technical reasons for that beyond my understanding. I imagine oddly-shaped batteries are probably going to become the norm.