The search has been on for a mobile power source that is no longer a slave to the recharger, the battery or the usual savaging from environmentalists.
The answer could well be chemically enhanced. Chemical fuel cells generate power from a liquid source, such as methanol, and would give a mobile 20 hours of talktime and allow laptops free to roam far from any power point for days.
Cars, generators and even vacuum cleaners have benefited from the new fuel cell technology. Now, thanks to advances in miniaturisation, they'll be powering portable electronics from 2004 or slightly earlier.
It's a dream that has kept electronic firms busy for years. Quite apart from the ecological horror that conventional, bothersome power packs represent, the electronics industry is also concerned that lithium batteries are not up to powering the latest energy-hungry notebooks that boast power-mad multimedia and wireless connectivity.
Something small and portable, such as a methanol cartridge that pops into a powerful micro-fuel cell, would also be better suited to portable electronics, goes the present thinking. With legislation slated for the US and elsewhere designed to phase out the use of environmentally unfriendly laptop and mobile batteries, the major electronics companies are racing to be the first on the market with a viable fuel cell. We might even see them on sale next year says David Hart, a fuel cell research fellow at Imperial College London.
"They have the potential to oust the battery," he says. "Advanced type batteries will give micro fuel cells a run for their money. But fuel cells do have some significant advantages over their rivals."
Originally used to power Nasa's Gemini and Apollo missions in the 1960s, fuel cells are energy conversion devices that combine fuel with oxygen to produce electric power, heat and water.
Fuel cells that turn hydrogen into electricity are already advanced on cars and home generators, but their smaller micro-cousins have been difficult to perfect and they are still in the prototype stage, says Hart.
Unlike fuel cells for cars -polymer electrolyte fuel cells - those being used by the electronics industry, called direct methanol fuel cells (DMFCs), can be made smaller as liquid methanol is directly supplied to an electrode to produce electric ity. Casio, Sony and Toshiba have recently successfully demonstrated prototypes for PDAs and laptops. Now the key is to reduce the cost and size and increase the power output of DMFC cells to make them suitable even for cellphones.
"Initial costs will be prohibitive," says R Vasant Kumar, a batteries expert at Cambridge University. "But the advantages are that fuel cells are environmentally more friendly than conventional batteries." DMFC fuel cells using methanol emit only small amounts of water and carbon dioxide when generating electricity.
Korean electronics company Samsung says it has developed a mobile phone with a fuel cell the size of a credit card. Running on a supply of methanol, which is stored in an ink cartridge-like capsule, Samsung claims its prototype fuel cell can operate a mobile for 26 hours on standby or power the phone for 2.6 hours of chat. After that the fuel cell is recharged with another methanol capsule. The Koreans hope to market it in 2004.
Toshiba, meanwhile, says it will commercialise a fuel cell battery-operated notebook computer by 2004 with an operation time of about 10 hours, three times longer than conventional batteries.
Superior energy supply is definitely one area where the fuel cell promises to outperform batteries, but their environmental credentials are not as "clean" as they might seem at first glance, says Greenpeace campaigner Rob Gueterbock.
"It's true that they are more environmentally friendly than batteries, but they will not reduce significantly our dependence on fossil fuels. Methanol, after all, is derived from petroleum."
For the electronics companies the green aspects of the fuel cell are merely incidental. The power they generate is the most important aspect of the technology, he says.
"It was the increasing demand for on-board electronics in cars etc, which require more power, that drove the development of fuel cell-powered cars. This is what has been driving fuel cell technology in electronics, too, not so much environmental issues."
As a practical answer to the world's pressing need for clean and efficient power, micro fuel cells seem to fall wide of the mark. There are also safety considerations to be tackled by the electronics companies. Methanol is highly combustible and airlines are understandably nervous about laptops powered by fuel cells.
"The airline authorities have given certain fuel systems the green light, but regulations have to be ironed out first if micro fuel cells are going to be commercial," says Hart.
But when they do arrive, it might be sooner than many expected, with the first fuel cell laptops appearing in Japan late next year. The instantly rechargeable mobile, regenerated by a tiny fuel cartridge from your pocket, will take a little longer, yet says Hart.
Despite the claims of Samsung, Hart is not convinced that the scale of miniaturisation needed for today's midget cellphones can be achieved so easily without incurring a great deal of tinkering and extra expense.
"A mobile phone fuel cell would require complex management of heat airflow, and so on. It's not really been demonstrated and so I'm sceptical," he says.
Still, the Japanese are confident the lithium-ion battery has had its day. One business research unit in Tokyo puts the shipment of fuel cells for portable devices, including mobiles, at £220m in 2010. Providing the right chemistry, fuel cells and portables seem destined for each other.
