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Longer battery life is high atop our list of gadget prayers , and the brainiacs at Stanford are one step closer to making our dreams come true with a new lithium-sulfur technology. Half of this trick lies in the silicon nanowire anode that the same team developed back in 2007, whereas the new cathode consists of a similarly commodious lithium sulfide nanostructure. Compared to present lithium-ion batteries, Stanford’s design is ” significantly safer ” and currently achieves 80 percent more capacity, but it’s nowhere near commercial launch with just 40 to 50 charge cycles (Li-ion does “300 to 500″) due to the compound’s rapid degradation. That said, we’re promised a theoretical quadruple boost in capacity as the technology…

Topics: Video , How-tos , Cult of Mac , iPhone This may be strange — in fact very strange — but Imperial Leisure , a marketing and social media firm, has created an advertisement using an iPhone, to promote the sale of Jaffa oranges . They found that with a lot of rods and cable you can use orange power, or rather the power of 2380 Jaffa oranges, to power an iPhone. Talk about thinking outside of the box, or in this case, the crate. [via Engadget and Macenstein ] Click on the Read More link to view the ad. TUAW iPhone battery dead? In a squeeze you can charge it with …

Simple and clean, ladies and gentlemen, that’s how a lot of people wish they could get their cell phones.  Simple and clean–and that’s exactly what the Samsung Smooth will bring into play. The Samsung Smooth offers conference call capability, speakerphone, Bluetooth connectivity, a phone book capable of storing a thousand name and number references, mobile email and web browsing, a variety of downloadable content, a .3 megapixel digital camera, alarm clock, calculator, stopwatch, and a battery capable of generating five hours of talk time on a single charge. First off, the resolution on this camera is criminally low.  I realize this is a cell phone camera, but for crying out loud, there are TOY cameras for children that can do better than .3 megapixel.  This …

Modern gadgetry (you know, as opposed to “ancient gadgetry,” such as the abacus and the hour glass) lives and dies by its batteries, so it’s no surprise that lots of time and effort is spent researching both wacky alternatives to the tried and true power cell , as well as ways to make existing cells better. Among the latter, Nikkei is reporting that Eamex in Osaka, Japan, has developed a lithium-ion battery that will last some twenty years of regular use — that’s 10,000 charges! The secret to the long-lasting lithium-ion? In current designs, the tin that’s used for the battery’s negative electrode weakens through continual charging and recharging. The new design, however, calls for tin-coated resin that stabilizes the electrode and prevents deterioration…

Tablets are front and center at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, and Nvidia wants to be the power behind the trendy devices. Nvidia launched its next-generation Tegra processor on Thursday, marketing it as the first processor for the mobile web and specifically designed for the high-resolution needs of tablets. Nvidia is betting consumers are going to buy into the tablet phenomenon and its portable, high-resolution Internet experience. The new Tegra processor aims to deliver processor power by making high-speed browsing and streaming 1080p video possible. The chip also supports Adobe Flash Player 10.1 acceleration with a 3-D user interface, and offers days of battery life. “Consumers can now get the tablet experience they’ve always dreamed of, and they can leave the power cord at home,” says…

Curious what your future phone will look like? OK, so this isn’t some sleek device that interacts with a chip wired into your ear canal, but rather your phone two or three years into the future, which is slightly less visionary, but still pretty cool. I chose the features for this phone based on what I know chipmakers are doing and betting on, but if any of you have a different vision, feel free to lay it out. This is a plausible gadget, but certainly not the only phone. I also talked to Jeff Brown, a principal analyst at Portelligent, to get a sense of how feasible some of this stuff is, as well as with my …

While battery technology certainly hasn’t progressed as far as we’d like, which is just yet, amagriom! The good news is that Nissan is working on a new type of battery cells. If the estimations are correct, then Nissan’s Leaf will be able to travel a good 200 miles on a single charge. Not too shabby eh? Permalink: 200 Mile Car Runs On Battery from Ubergizmo | Hot: Palm Pixi Review

Somehow or another, we’ve figured out how to send mere mortals to the moon, create (and mass produce) a laptop thin enough to floss with and add multitouch capabilities to a mouse . But for whatever reason, we’re still stuck using AA batteries that last approximately one-fifth as long as you need them to. Outside of a few breakthroughs here and there , the battery industry at large has found a holding pattern that digs at consumers and likely fattens the wallets of those in charge. Thanks to new research surrounding the use of Cladophora (green algae) in a flexible, ultrathin…

We gadget nerds have to endure unspeakable atrocities in order to slake that early adoption jones: first-run gear shipped DOA , buggy pre-release software , and months of waiting after a product leaks only to be greeted by a jacked-up price premium at launch. So we feel your pain, original Kindle owners, after Amazon announced a major firmware update that brings native PDF support to the 6-inch Kindle 2 and DX readers with the promise of a staggering 85% increase in battery life to all Kindle 2 devices — if you haven’t already received it OTA, the 2.3 software update is now available for download and installation via…

Topics: Features , Troubleshooting , Ask TUAW Welcome back to Ask TUAW , our weekly troubleshooting Q&A column. This week we’ve got questions about controlling a PC over the internet, silencing iPhone email notifications at night, replacing a MacBook Pro SuperDrive with a hard drive, printing over the internet, setting iCal as the default calendar, and more. As always, your suggestions and questions are welcome. Leave your questions for next week in the comments section at the end of this post. When asking a question, please include which machine you’re using and what version of Mac OS X is installed on it (we’ll assume you’re running Snow Leopard on…