We have a ton of features in today’s smartphones and sadly that means more drain on the battery. It’s just a fact of life. As we can do more, battery life is sacrificed. Well, Elecom wants to help.

They have come up with a pocket battery that was specially designed to recharge your smartphone. Inside, it holds a 1600mAh battery that will feature special tips for phones from various manufacturers including Apple, Samsung and Sony Ericsson. Hopefully this will hit the US market soon too.

Sanyo’s eneloop batteries have been around for a while. People seem to like them when it comes to powering our various toys and gadgets. And now Sanyo is offering some new AA and AAA eneloop rechargeable batteries that will give you 500 more charges compared to the previous versions.

They are already charged and ready to go in the packaging. The company claims that they can maintain about 75% of their charge for up to three years and they are capable of up to 1,500 charge cycles. Perfect for Christmas time.

Quirky has some cool products that we have talked about before. One of my favorites was the Switch knife that surfaced a while back. The latest offering from Quirky is the Trek Support backpack. The thing is designed to hold your gadgets and notebook and can help keep them charged up too.

The backpack has a removable battery inside that promises 7 hours of power depending on what you hook to it. The battery pack has four pockets and has enough outlets to charge three of those USB gadgets at the same time.

Just about every smartphone on the market today charges from a USB port and lots of cameras and other gadgets do too. That means that when you need power on the go you can use a single battery pack, assuming it supports USB.

Mophie is best known for its line of juice pack battery cases for the iPhone. The company has announced a new battery pack called the juice pack powerstation that has a large 3600mAh battery inside. The cool part is that the battery pack has a pair of USB ports on the bottom for charging anything that uses a USB port.

Many devices have moved away from AA and AAA batteries in favor of lithium-ion rechargeable batteries. But for things like TV remotes, the use of AA and AAA batteries are still the norm. We have rechargeable versions of these batteries, but sadly most people still rely on the standard one use versions and throw them away.

Brother has an alternative for low-power devices. A new Vibration-power Generating battery (VpGB) has been created which can be produced in both AA and AAA sizes. It does not contain a certain amount of energy which gets discharged and then becomes useless though. Instead, shaking the battery generates power which can then be used immediately.

Microsoft’s new InstaLoad technology sounds amazing. It promises to redefine the way you insert batteries into your devices, letting you forget about positive or negative polarity. That’s possible thanks to a patented battery contact design, which Microsoft says “simply works,” and is compatible with a whole range of battery sizes, both standard and rechargeable.

Microsoft is already licensing the technology to third party device suppliers, and is even offering a royalty-free license for suppliers and manufacturers of accessibility products. This could change the entire battery game.

My gadgets never seem to last as long as I need them too. About the time I really get into a game on my iPhone, the battery is nearly dead. The same goes for my iPad, the battery goes so long that when it gets low I am usually surprised and right in the middle of reading.

MiLi has announced a pair of new external battery packs called the Miracle and the Crystal. Both of the power packs are very similar and apparently, the only difference is that the Miracle has a slim design for bags and the Crystal has a carabiner loop built-in.

Normally when we buy batteries that aren’t specifically designed to be rechargeable, we simply throw them away when they go dead. A company called PC Treasures is bringing a cool device to the US called the Battery Engineer that might change that.

The device is a charging system that claims to be able to recharge disposable batteries as many as ten times. It supports multiple size battery charging and can charge four different batteries at once.

I want batteries in my gadgets that last a long time. However, how fast the battery can be recharged is equally important. If the battery runs for 12 hours, but takes six hours to charge it’s not such a great thing.

A cool new portable battery pack has surfaced called the Freeplay ZipCharge. The device has a USB port for charging all manner of gadgets. The battery inside the ZipCharge can power your iPod for a full extra charge after only 15 minutes of charging itself.

Energizer is one of the most poplar brands for batteries of all sorts including rechargeable batteries. The company unveiled some cool chargers for rechargeable batteries a while back called the USB Charger and the Duo Charger.

The chargers connected to your PC USB port and had software you could download to see the charge status of the batteries. Energizer has announced that the software for Windows machines has a major security vulnerability in it. The Mac version is unaffected.

Panasonic is always looking to improve the life of their batteries and so they have just announced a new battery that lasts 30% longer than today’s lithium ion batteries. Instead of a graphite anode, the new rechargeable lithium ion batteries will use an anode made of silicon alloy. Panasonic even claims that after 500 charge/discharge cycles, the batteries will still retain 80% of their capacity.

That’s pretty huge when it comes to battery life. Aimed specifically at laptops, Panasonic says that the new battery technology will be produced in volume starting in 2012.

When we are on the go with our mobile devices, no one wants to run out of power. There are all sorts of gadgets on the market that are designed to keep our gadgets powered up and usable. Scosche has announced its latest portable battery pack called the solBAT II.

The device is a solar charger and back up battery with two LEDs on the top to show when it is making power from the sun and when it is charging a connected device. The charger can recharge any device that connects via USB. That means Blackberrys, iPhones, and iPods are all compatible.

I have used several ZAGG products over the years to protect my notebook and smartphones. The company makes a line of protective films that prevent scratches on your gadgets that work great. ZAGG has now announced its first external battery called the ZAGGsparq.

The ZAGGsparq is a small 3.5 x 3.5 x 1 inch external battery pack. Inside the case is a 6000mAh lithium polymer battery that can recharge up to four iPhones fully. The battery has dual USB ports for charging two devices at once.

Duracell recently introduced its new Ultra Advanced battery that lets consumers know exactly how much power is available in each battery, eliminating the need to guess. The battery comes with Powercheck, which is a gauge on the battery that can be activated by pressing two white dots on the cell.

The Ultra Advanced with Powercheck will make their debut at Costco and some other major retailers in December. There’s a small additional cost compared to regular CopperTop batteries though, as you might expect.

We’re used to seeing our gadgets come in a variety of colors, but rechargeable batteries are generally dull and boring. Not anymore. Sanyo’s latest Eneloop Tone batteries introduce bright colors that they hope will entice you to buy some.

Sanyo’s Eneloop batteries are capable of being charged about 1500 times, and are sold already charged up without losing much of their original charge by the time they get to you.