A lot of news on the smartphone battery front this week. During TechCrunch's Disrupt conference, a company known as Nucleus Scientific demonstrated its plan to charge an iPhone in 5 minutes. What better news could we want in an era full of gadgets and gizmos? As a society so reliant on our smartphones, it's this type of battery technology news that we look forward to. If your device is dying as you’re reading this, then you understand what I mean.

As stated on its website, Nucleus Scientific is “to develop a suite of technologies that will significantly improve energy storage and utilization”. The “Intelligent Energy System”, as it is currently called, intends to reduce battery charging times from hours to minutes. The guys working on this include the founder of Nucleus Scientific, Ian Hunter, a Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering from MIT, as well as a group of PhDs in chemistry from MIT. They hope to take a suite of battery technologies, and completely change the way the energy is stored and transferred. The team are currently at work with a 10,000 mAh prototype capable of fully charging in just 15 minutes, a transfer rate that would do the same to smartphone (lithium-ion and lithium polymer) batteries in just 3 minutes (Tech Crunch).

If we aren't able to embrace magical phone cases that keep our iPhones juiced up, or consistently recharge our devices simply by walking around in the sun, then this is close enough. What we really want, more than anything, is the quick and the easy. I wouldn't mind my smartphone battery draining as it does on a day-to-day basis, as long as charging it didn't take so darn long. If charging meant plugging in my smartphone for as long as it took to brush my teeth, I would be a happy consumer. Hopefully, as we continue seeing more solutions like this, the reality could be on its way.