Forget smartphone battery life woes - the future is nuclear batteries that never need charging

The march of progress with smartphone batteries is undeniable, with innovations like fast charging making a real difference, but phones get more powerful and demanding too - meaning battery life is a constant battle for something acceptable.

The future, however, is a nuclear battery that can keep supplying power for 50 years with no need for it to be charged. At least that's the case if the claims of a Chinese tech startup, Betavolt, become a reality.

Betavolt's nuclear battery is a compact disc, smaller than a coin, that contains 63 nuclear isotopes, and their decay provides the energy that's made into electricity to power a device.

Sounds dangerous? Well, it isn't, and in fact these kind of batteries are already in use (and have been for some time now) with very low-power devices.

In a report by The Independent, the company asserts that:

"The atomic energy battery developed by Betavolt is absolutely safe, has no external radiation, and is suitable for use in medical devices such as pacemakers, artificial hearts and cochleas in the human body."

The battery is environmentally friendly, too, because after the isotopes have fully decayed, they turn into a stable isotope of copper. We're told that this is "non-radioactive and does not pose any threat or pollution to the environment."

How far away is a potential nuclear battery with a beefier capacity and output, then? The company is pilot testing the current BV100 battery right now, but envisages mass production of batteries for the likes of smartphones and drones in the future.

This BV100 incarnation is capable of producing 100 microwatts, and Betavolt reckons it'll have a battery that delivers 1W of power by 2025.

We'll need much more than that for a smartphone, mind, and whether this tech can translate to an ultra-long-lasting nuclear battery that can fit in and drive a phone - while keeping costs down so they aren't exorbitant and well out of reach of consumer-level devices - well, that's a different matter.

Read more: World's first 'game-changer' headset that never runs out of battery unveiled at CES 2024