Eking extra juice from iPod, laptop batteries, maybe

By Franklin Paul

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Someday, the batteries that power your iPod or laptop will last for weeks. Until then, your options for keeping the juice flowing range from hacking them to whacking them.

Eventually, users of MP3 players, mobile phones or personal computers all face an ominous flashing light or dull "beep" -- the device's warning that it has sucked all but the last spark from its portable power source. Brace yourself, this "low battery" alert says, the end is near.

At the heart of the $55 billion global battery market is the chemical conundrum of power supply. Engineers have shrunk and souped up gadgets so that it's possible to watch whole movies on paperback book-sized devices, but portable power technology has not kept up.

"You want to be able to watch that movie on your iPhone that you have downloaded from iTunes. But unfortunately your battery only lasts 45 minutes," said Ross Dueber, a battery industry veteran and chief executive of ZPower.

"We want more content delivered to us on the go. The service providers are willing to provide that, the bandwidth is there, but the handheld device is somewhat limited unless you are willing to carry larger batteries."

Consumers looking to squeeze more from their pocket power source are often forced to dig up clues on how best to care for -- and manipulate -- their batteries.

For example, there's the heavy-handed school of problem solving. On metacafe (http://tinyurl.com/yq9pqw), a video shows blogger 'emorfis' removing AA batteries from a game controller and fixing them -- with force.

"Use a hard tool such as a hammer ... and pound the battery casing," the video's subtitles say. "Keep pounding while turning the batteries, to make it more effective."