finally, sony can take care of the psp's battery suckage

i don't know... call me skeptical, but the last company i want doing development on fuel based batteries is Sony :(

Engineer a gas that when you burn it, it turns to another gas, but when you burn that 2nd gas it reverts back the previous. Harness that and viola! Man I'm stretching...

Do we really need another fossil-fuel based flammable, poisonous liquid fuel technology that also has to be transported, stored, and sold?

@ghmlco: Just FYI: Methanol, as every other hydrocarbon (well even as water), can be produced from fossil fuels. It is, however, not a fossil fuel in itself but rather tends to be produced from ethanol which, as every alcoholic knows, can be obtained from various greenery by various processes of fermentation. So, sheathe you guns.

@tehronin: H2 does that, but the problem is do to conservation of Energy in a perfect world you would have a nat gain of 0 Joules of Energy. In the real world, that processes would suck energy not spit it.

Let me know when these are actually purchasable...

Every year for the past 5-6 years we've seen somebody displaying their compact fuel cell prototype and saying "in xx months it'll be on the market and available for laptops, cell phones, you name it, woo!"

And you know what? Every year, nothing comes to market. We're all waiting for the super high-tech vaporware that fuel cells represent...and in the mean time, we're piddling around buying expensive batteries that don't last very long.

The solution to longer battery life is here today, if you're willing to turn a hand-crank generator for a few minutes every hour or so. Why aren't those being heavily marketed for cell phones and other small devices? Why the focus on expensive technology when generators are so cheap and technologically practical today?

@xanderjanz: Obviously those gasses aren't volatile enough.

Great, exploding batteries were bad enough before.

@tehronin: If there was a way to transfer energy with out loss, me thinks Mr. Tesla would be rolling over in his grave.

@yogibimbi: Operative words "can be". Currently, it's primarily produced by reforming natural gas and steam. And no matter how it's produced, it still needs to be packaged and shipped.

Which also means to me that, price-wise, it's going to be nowhere near as competitive, nor as convenient, as recharging via a wall socket.

@jackfrost132:
And his corpse could then be wrapped in wire, surrounded by magnets and used to end the energy crisis.

This will be a joy to get through airport security.

Yeah airports and such, a hand cranked charger for cell phones or laptops would be much easier and a sure thing compared to trying to get a container or chemicals through an airport. If a notebook came with a hand crank charger attachment at least you would know with some effort you don't need the sun, or chemicals to charge the thing.

Is it like soon 2008, or soon sometime this millenium?
Sure it's interesting this time the prototype is being announced by Sony...
But since I've already seen water-based prototype rechargers, fuel cell for laptops, and tons of other solutions that would extend battery times 10 fold but never saw the light of day... I'm waiting for a final product to really be excited.

Also, I wonder the effect an exploding battery like that would cause.

@EQC: I'm with you on this. Every year we hear some company that comes with some form of battery using xyz technology which supposedly gives gadgets another 10+ hours, but never see it on the market.
However, having said that, I have more hope for this product than others simply because it is from Sony. Love them or hate them, Sony has a history of pushing new *cough*proprietary*cough* hardware out to the general masses...and occasionally into our faces as well.

Sony + Batteries = Recall