New tools that can charge you up

T.J. Burger does not have fond memories of the first year his store began selling digital cameras.

"It was horror story after horror story," says Mr. Burger, a salesman at Dan's Camera City in Allentown, Pa.

It wasn't about the cameras. The problem: The cheap batteries in the cameras generated about as much power as a hamster on a treadmill. "You would take five pictures and the battery was dead," says Burger.

Five years later, digital-camera owners consistently rank weak batteries as a top complaint. So do users of several other portable devices, including cellphones, laptop computers, and personal digital assistants (PDAs).

It's easy to understand why. Every year, engineers develop more-powerful microchips that enable devices to perform a greater number of functions. That puts a greater drain on battery life.

"Processing power doubles every year," says Alex Slawsby, who analyzes hand-held devices for market-research firm IDC. "But batteries have only taken baby steps."

Batteries are essentially tiny containers of chemicals, explains Mr. Slawsby. What they can do is limited to what exists in nature. "We're not seeing a lot of new elements appear in the periodic table," he says with a laugh.

In order to keep consumers buying gadgets, electronics manufacturers are mounting a major effort to address concerns about battery power. They have given consumers several new options. Among them: devices that require less power to begin with, and accessories that ease recharging.

Retailers hope the new innovations finally help meet consumers' expectations for the performance of their gadgets. "Our customers' biggest complaint is that the batteries never last as long as they were led to believe," says Burger.

Already, most portable products last a lot longer than they did five years ago. Experts credit the gains to the fact that most gadgets now run on lithium-ion and nickel-based batteries rather than alkaline. Both types hold more power and can be quickly recharged.

With these new technologies, battery capacity has risen about 5 to 10 percent every year, say experts. Using standard batteries, consumers can now get between 10 to 15 hours of talk time on their cellphones, about a week of regular use on a Palm handheld computer, about six to eight hours on a Pocket PC, and between two and three hours on a laptop computer.

But these times might shrink as portable devices bulk up once again with the next generation of improvements. One example of a growing power drain: display screens, which are getting wider, showing more colors, and more frequently coming equipped with backlighting.

Rather than hope for a new miracle battery, manufacturers have focused on making gadgets less power-hungry to begin with.

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