Chemistry Content of Cell Phone Batteries

May 1, 2015 9:32 AM

I just finished reading The Powerhouse by Steve Levine and it inspired me to be curious about the specific lithium battery chemistry of current cell and smartphones. I've found this link from Battery University which does a great job describing the current major variants used (LMO, NCA, NMC, etc). In some google searching I haven't found any specs on what phones like the Nexus 6 or the S6, or iPhone 6 uses.

I imagine many use combination much like car manufacturers do, but it's not easily apparent. My google searching has included the phone model and words like "battery chemistry" or "LMO" or "battery specs" and what I come up with is references to lithium ion batteries without listing the specific battery chemistry. I realize some of this might be proprietary, but I assumed many would at least be found in general terms. As a consumer it would be useful to know the chemistry so I know some of the characteristics such as what point thermal runaway might occur (oops I left my phone in the sun for X hours...etc). I admit I'm a geek so this is just fun to me, but i'm surprised I can't find it easily. What search terms am I missing? What context am I missing?

posted by wonderfullyrich to Technology (3 answers total)

That kind of information is often considered proprietary. The company doesn't release it outside the company because there's no benefit for it to do so.

Sometimes they will for purposes of advertising, but that tends to vary by company. (Someone like Apple tends to try to sex up their products in advertising by pretending that they are at or beyond the bleeding edge, and bragging about the technology they use.)

But when you're dealing with what is essentially a commodity product, there's no real advantage for the company to talk about such things.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:38 AM on May 1, 2015

Almost all modern phone use Li-ion

They can get hot so they have current limiting and temp limiting circuits.
posted by kschang at 1:43 PM on May 1, 2015

Should have clarified, but the different chemistries you specified are almost irrelevant in terms of performance, you're talking about at best a few percentage points. A lot of it is just so they don't tread on each other's patents. Same thing happened in the writable-DVD dye war when the media got cheap. When only a few companies make media stuff made was expensive, then the other makers started figuring out alternative formulas that doesn't tread on existing patents but offer similar performance, and the pseudo-monopoly was broken and price plummeted. You may or may not noticed that the DVD media had different "colors"... they have different dye formulas.

Obviously, researchers are working on ever better formulas, like the Lithium Sulfide version, but they aren't in use yet. And it's still Lithium Ion technology.
posted by kschang at 8:46 AM on May 2, 2015