Technology, Battery | featured news

A new system can wirelessly recharge smartphones and other consumer devices from up to several feet away — and it may eventually find use for electric vehicles and medical implants, too.

How long does a Chrome notebook battery last? Eighteen days, in the case of my test model. Sad. I know that this is a beta product, but that is a major fail, even in beta. This is the cloud-computing dream, the Microsoft headache that could challenge the ecosystem from Dell to Firefox.

By Texas Instruments, a new, 6mm-square Bluetooth system-on-a-chip can operate for "more than a year" on a small button-cell battery (like you see in watches or very tiny remotes). Everything from cellphones to laptops could get a battery boost from the technology increasing competition for the emerging Wi-Fi Direct to Connect technology.