I was thinking what the flashlight world would look like in the next 10 - 20 years? Comparing to what we had 20 - 30 years ago I would guess that we would have something like Maxa Beam capability (range and beam focus option) but packed in 3 times smaller size and 10 times cheaper. Also much more energy efficient. LED or laser, of course, as incans and HIDs will become obsolete.
Your thoughts?
There are
evolutionary changes to be expected:
- LED technology has improvements coming down the pike. System efficiency is already hitting 200 lm/W with a theoretical maximum component efficiency of ~348 lm/W. We might see the 300 lm/W components reach production ... or we might not. There's no other technology that's approaching LED efficiency and there are other avenues for improvement such as thermal ruggedness, output sag, tint shifts, green efficiency (although Philips solution has been to use blue-pumped green lately)
- Battery technology - that perpetual Achilles Heel of flashlights and pretty much all mobile electronics - is likely to see some incremental improvements as well. Li-ion is broadly considered to be played out in terms of improving it, so we're now waiting for new chemistries. At any one point in time there are a dozen or more lab contenders vying to replace the various li-ion chemistries - most of which will fizzle out in the lab for varying reasons of performance, cost, durability, fragility. But if the past is any guide there's reason to believe that there's something better than li-ion coming in the next 10-20 years.
I guess the real interesting question is what
revolutionary changes can we look forward to in the future? If I knew the answer to that question I'd be quietly making investments...
Laser-pumped phosphor could be the new thing in 10-20 years. I gather that the blue diodes have been seeing steady improvements in efficiency and cost reduction. There could be solutions forthcoming to phosphor wear or use of optics to spread that intense light out over a larger area whenever a point-like output is not needed.
Incandescent could make a return. There has been ongoing research to greatly improve its efficiency through novel materials-science changes to the filament to convert the heat filaments produce to heat. These approaches were too little too late to save the incandescent general-purpose mains-powered light bulb from efficiency mandates but if they pan out we might see LED-like efficiency from simple, cheap filaments.
Back to LED, if they can make them thermally tolerant to the point that heatsinking becomes somewhat optional, I wonder if we'll see the return of the showerhead format of sorts. It's possible to envision an array of tiny LEDs numbering in the dozens or hundreds in a small area in an arrangement not unlike the compound eyes of an insect with LEDs covering 'sectors' and varying output patterns. The versatility of such a device would be immense - "digital zoom", pan/and tilt beam, colored elements could tune the tint/CRI, already-cheap smartphone sensors could maintain relatively consistent beam orientation as the device is moved, etc. Since no single LED die will be expected to 'carry the show' they can be sufficiently small to pull this off.
Fuel cells might become practical for small electronics in the future. I doubt that the much-pined for
hydrogen fuel cell will fall into this category, but perhaps methanol or other types will overcome some of their operating orientation / operating temperature / energy-density / cost / etc challenges and become practical portable energy sources.
Outside of the light-producing side of things, 3D
metal printing is becoming cheaper. A number of patents in the field will have expired within 20 years and if the explosion of FDM plastic printing in the last decade immediately after those patents expired we can expect to see immensely cheaper / more accessible metal printing options. This will be quite interesting because presently flashlight design is very much centered around
machining which prefers certain symmetries and clearances for either rotating the body against a tool in a lathe or inserting a rotating tool into the body to relieve the material in a mill. Once simply
depositing materials becomes practical and affordable, expect the entire design language of flashlights - and countless other metal objects - to change dramatically.