Arguably, the world’s biggest drawback to smartphones is battery life. Our smartphones can look in the sky and identify stars while simultaneously streaming a Russian radio station. But try to find a smartphone that can last more than 24 hours on a single charge, and you’ll be hard pressed.

That’s why a technological invention unveiled by a student is capturing the attention of Google and other tech companies. That innovation could charge smartphones in as little as 30 seconds.

18-year old Eesha Khare has created a supercapacitor that can charge phones in under 30 seconds. The young student’s project was revealed as part of the 2013 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

Apparently, Google has already contacted Khare about the supercapacitor, although for whatever reasons, Khare doesn’t want to sell the technology any time soon.

“10,000 charge-recharge cycles”

Most phone batteries can perform about 1,000 charge-recharge cycles before they completely give up. The new supercapacitor, however, is built to hold 10,000 charge-recharge cycles, giving it 10 times longer life than anything available today.

Check out the technology in action in the video before (3 minutes long):

Ten years from now, I think we’ll look back in shock and remember that it used to take 2 to 3 hours to charge a smartphone to 100% battery life. Charging Android devices in 30 seconds would be useful, to say the least.