According to this New Scientist article, we may finally be seeing some great battery life out of our mobile gear. With a few tweaks to the manufacture of lithium ion batteries, new cells will provide more power for a longer period of time and be useful for a greater number of charging cycles.

This is great news for anyone with an aging laptop or iPod battery. My laptop’s a couple years old, but I’m only able to get about twenty minutes of juice out of the battery these days. It also has a habit of fooling my power meters, going from 68% to 3% in the blink of an eye. If I move fast enough, I can shut it down before it croaks.

The greater power output of the new batteries also allows them to power flashguns (perhaps for mobile phones) and power tools like screwdrivers and drills. This means better batteries for those in the construction trade, and possibly cheaper and lighter batteries than the NiMH batteries that power most of that equipment these days.

There’s no word in the article on price, but the batteries may see market in around two years. Assuming I drop the scratch on a new Dell battery today, that means I should be about ready for a replacement again when the new ones hit…