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A dead smartphone is a hassle, but a dead camera battery is a catastrophe if you’re in the middle of a shoot—that is, only as long as batteries still charge at a glacial pace.
Startup firm StoreDot is working on a way to almost eliminate charge times. Last week, they unveiled a prototype that can fully charge a Samsung Galaxy S4 in 30 seconds. The charging tech should easily apply to camera batteries as well, since smartphones and cameras both (almost always) use lithium ion packs.
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StoreDot is aiming for a commercial release sometime in 2016, according to the Wall Street Journal. The final product should be about the size of a smartphone, and should cost $30—or about twice the price of a regular phone charger. While this particular device almost certainly wouldn’t work with a camera battery (or most Li-ion packs for that matter), it’d be a surprise if somebody didn’t license the technology and tap into the camera market.
Update: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Most of the coverage missed out on the detail that StoreDot isn't fast-charging a stock S4 battery—they've equipped it with a proprietary pack. So they'll sell you a charger for $30, but how much for the battery? And how much of a charge can it hold? It's not out of the realm of possibility that this could be a step forward for consumer battery tech, but we'll have to temper our expectations a bit.