The prominence of charging stations at airports is unquestionably a result of failure on the part of device manufacturers.

As I walk through the airport preparing for the flight back home to Sydney, I can’t help but notice the abundance of AC and USB power stations, which everyone is huddled around in anticipation of the power their devices are about to receive.

This shouldn’t be the case. “All day battery” isn’t good enough, because it doesn’t mean what the name implies. “All day battery” is really “all day battery with severe limitations.” In order to achieve it, a device must be used exactly as the manufacturer intends for only a certain number of hours arbitrarily chosen by the manufacturer to mean “all day battery.”

It isn’t a hassle to charge a device once a day. I agree with that, but manufacturers need to be striving for unconditional “all day battery,” including edge-cases.

All day battery will only be a reality when device batteries can last as long as humans can last without sleep. A device shouldn’t die before its user- even if its user wakes up, boards a 24 hour aeroplane flight to Europe, and is editing video the entire ride.

This will mean that with normal usage, “all day battery” may in fact get the average user through a full 40-hour working week, but the beauty lies in knowing that they have all day battery available to them should they need it.

Sure, this is ambitious and we’re probably a while off this kind of reality, but it’s something that needs to happen before “all day battery” really means something that’s as good as it sounds.