What Do You Want in the Surface Pro 5

@darkmagistric AMEN! There is absolutely no need for a 4K display on a 12.5" device - NONE. I think a lot of users would give up a few mm for more battery packed around a Kaby Lake M7 with power optimized internals and TWO DAY battery life. Make it the opposite extreme of a decked out, 32gb/2tb supercomputer in a tablet shell.

Who knows, maybe that's what WOA on the ARM 835 processor will get us this time next year.

 

I think the slow progress in battery technology has much to do with the fact that for most of the 20th century it didn't matter much. We were exploiting life on fossil fuels. Also just think about the explosion of mobile tech gizmos over the past 20-30 years. When I look back at my childhood, I only needed batteries for my walkman or my Game Boy/Atari Lynx. Now we use batteries everywhere.

It is sad when you think about the fact that we had electric cars at the beginning of the automobile. If the world had taken that route instead of burning toxic fumes, battery tech nowadays would have looked a lot different.

I wish Marty McFly would have actually arrived in 2015. Then he should have taken Elon Musk and make an introduction to Henry Ford so he would have put some damn batteries on the assembly line. Oh, the magical times we could have had....

Nowadays, every other month or so, we read about some new battery tech breakthough in some lab and wonder about the future it might hold, similar to this:


Then, we realize that nothing has come of it, so our excitement gets replaced with disappointment, like this:

 

Sorry, but I don't think so. The reason I've been using my iPad Pro over my Toshiba is that it is 1.5 mm thinner. It actually has better battery life than the Toshiba, probably due to better power management, not bigger battery, and a much better screen. But it isn't battery or screen that makes me grab the iOS device when going out. It is the lightness and thinness. Is the difference significant? Not really, but enough that my inertia goes for convenience over full featured OS.

Twitter is to communications as haiku is to literature.

 

<<...Do you have a link?..>>

It was a few years ago. I'm not even sure I remember where I saw it anymore...

The only reason I remember the battery comments is because, at the time, I was heavily into energy storage technology and the article summed up what I was also seeing.

This isn't the article I read, but it follows the same theme:

Tech World Vexed by Slow Progress on Batteries
By Christopher Mims The Wall Street Journal christopher.mims@wsj.com
Oct. 5, 2014 7:39 p.m. ET

There is no Moore’s law for batteries. That is, while the computing power of microchips doubles every 18 months, the capacity of the batteries on which ever more of our gadgets depend exhibits no such exponential growth. In a good year, the capacity of the best batteries in our mobile phones, tablets and notebook computers—and increasingly, in our cars and household gadgets—increases just a few percent... (snip)

Another interesting recent article:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602245/why-we-still-dont-have-better-batteries/

(Courtesy of MIT Technology Review)

 

Agreed! 4K is so 2016.

It's either Apple's 5K or go all the way to 8!

 

You can really tell the difference of one and one-half fingernails (thickness)? I guess nothing really does get by you. You really wouldn't be interested in a 24 hour tablet for those silly millimeters?

 

I would say that my built-in inertia and laziness can feel it. I'm the first one to admit that it is irrational. Because the iPad is in a little black bag together with my Kindle, Xperia Ultra, a battery pack, USB cable with microUSB/Lightning connector, USB memory with Lightning connector and Apple Pencil. On the other hand the Toshiba is packed in a slightly larger bag with a Microsoft Wedge keyboard, Logitech UltraThin mouse, charger, TruPen, those ridiculous AAAA batteries and so on. Total weight difference is the iPad constellation's advantage. But even that is a tad silly, because I put it in my little basket in the front of my bicycle when I leave. And this is probably where the iPad has another, albeit slight advantage. The screen is brighter, bright enough that I can use it outdoors should I chose to do so. The Toshiba require an indoors environment.
Finally, the battery life is also an advantage for the iPad Pro. But in my use case it hardly matters. I use the device for between three and four hours while away from home. So both devices are fine for me from that viewpoint. Would I want a 24 hour battery? I guess. Do I need it? Not really. Should I forget to charge it the battery pack will keep it running for those hours I need it.
Do I appreciate your rationale? Absolutely. My point is that not everyone needs to run around and be connected to their device 24/7. Should there be a device that fulfill all those needs for you? Why not! But until we can design them ourselves, you might have to wait.

 

This would be a dream come true; totally impractical but heaven nonetheless. The ultimate PC, or should we say Personally Designed Computer...

In a way, it would be the computer revolution come full circle as many of us old hands grew up designing our own white boxes at home...a modular ultrabook, laptop, or tablet would be to die for.

 

Graphene based batteries, one step further:

https://futurism.com/we-may-finally-have-a-way-of-mass-producing-graphene/
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/243644-explosions-used-make-large-quantities-graphene

And also this:

http://www.graphene-info.com/graphene-batteries

and this:

http://www.businessinsider.com/henr...tionary-battery-tech-for-electric-car-2016-10

 

<<...Graphene based batteries, one step further...>>

See also:

http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/threads/yet-another-new-battery-technology.65862/

PS: You might want to post your finds over there, too...

PPS: Time will tell about this and other contenders for "super battery" status. As the one article implies, the landscape is littered with super battery wannabes. A123 was a typical example; once one of the shining stars of the future, they crashed and burned. EEStor is another example; a supercapacitor concept, they were never quite able to make it to market. I think that the bête noire of these advanced concepts is critical field strength. As the charge in the device increases, so do the internal electric fields; at some point the field becomes so great (critical field) that the insulation design is overcome and the device shorts out internally. The micro-design of the device internals and the material properties used are very difficult to combine successfully. Graphene might be a big part of the answer but, again, time will tell...