A new type of battery could offer consumers days of phone life after only a few seconds' charging.
Researchers at the University of Central Florida (UCF) recently created a high-powered battery with supercapacitors that allow it to store a large amount of energy.
Supercapacitors charge quickly because they store energy statically on the surface of the material whereas existing batteries use chemical reactions to store and discharge energy.
The new battery is a small, thin piece of metal that could also be used in electric vehicles and wearables, such as smart watches.
It can be charged more than 30,000 times, outlasting current lithium ion phone batteries, which have a lifespan of between 300 and 500 charges, Battery University in Canada says.
The UCF researchers say that lithium-ion batteries typically will not last beyond 1500 charges.
Lithium-ion batteries are known to degrade after about 18 months, lasting for shorter periods with each recharge.
"If they were to replace the batteries with these supercapacitors, you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn't need to charge it again for over a week," Professor Nitin Choudhary, one of the researchers, told the Telegraph in London.
Before this, supercapacitators were not used to make batteries as they were too large for standard smartphones.
However, the UCF researchers used tiny wires, a nanometre thick, to create their prototype. The wires are coated with a high energy shell, with their highly conductive cores allowing for fast charging.
This year, SolidEnergy Systems, a company set up by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) alumni, created a battery with twice the energy capacity of conventional phone batteries. The company plans to make it available to smartphone manufacturers next year.
This technology could lead to more compact phones with the same amount of battery life, or phones the same size as those in use now whose batteries last for twice the amount of time.
The UCF supercapacitor battery is not yet ready to be released to manufacturers, but shows that progress is being made in smartphone battery technology.