Chapter 280: Joy Of A New Home

Translator: Henyee Translations  Editor: Henyee Translations

December was not a calm month for the lithium battery industry.

In Apple’s scheduled winter press conference, they announced a new concept line of mobile phones.

In addition to some minor improvements, the most eye-catching improvement was undoubtedly the four times increased standby time.

More specific information would be announced next spring.

The moment this news came out, the entire internet was shocked.

On a mobile phone forum…

Arguing about major phone manufacturers here had become a daily norm. As long as it was not too ridiculous, the netizens would be heavily biased toward their favorite phone brands.

Normally, the battlefield of the phone manufacturers was evenly matched.

However, after that Apple press conference before Christmas, this balance was broken.

[F*ck, four times battery?!]

[Nutty!]

[Apple is crazy!!!]

Even though new tech products had been coming out every year, there was not much difference between each generation of products. After all, due to the degradation of Moore’s Law, CPU and GPU speeds were bottlenecked. Most phone manufacturers could not surprise anyone with their new iteration of phones.

However, the announcement of the 400% increase in battery life shocked companies like Huawei, Xiaomi, and Samsung.

A certain mobile phone user could not take it anymore. He could not help but make a post.

[Stop bragging about Apple, they don’t even make lithium batteries. Lithium battery technology wasn’t invented by Apple. I’m willing to bet that in a year, every phone will have a significantly increased battery life.]

This post would undoubtedly be attacked by Apple fanboys.

In fact, hundreds of Apple fans were criticizing this guy in the comments section.

However, the original poster took the attack well. He linked the Nature highlights and the Washington Times as well as various other media articles. He calmly made his arguments.

However, the original poster did not expect people to focus on something else.

[F*ck me, did I read it right? God Lu solved this? Isn’t God Lu a mathematics professor?]

[Lithium dendrites… I was learning this stuff a month ago. It was solved half a year ago?!]

[Amazing, half a year ago this guy was bragging about changing Science using mathematics. I thought he was just bragging, I didn’t expect his IQ to go beyond my imagination.]

[You’re not the only one…]

Although Nature and Science highlights caused a sensation, and the Columbia TV station even did an exclusive report, all of the news was in the science section, so there were not that many tech people who paid attention to it.

After all, the more scientific the breakthrough, the less it was connected to customers.

Most people did not even know what lithium dendrites were. Their confused reaction would be, “Haven’t we begun using lithium batteries long ago?”

However, as the research result slowly spread to the industry and changed people’s lives, some curious people would eventually trace back to the roots of this change.

The sensation caused by the thesis half a year ago was contained in the academic community and the industry. However, this time, after major electronics manufacturers released their announcements, the news was spread to the general public…

…

Actually, it was not just Apple. A year ago, Warwick, Samsung, and other mobile phone companies had already begun new product line up plans. They just had not announced it yet.

However, after the MRS Conference, the lithium dendrites problem seemed to have been conclusively solved. This coupled with the enthusiasm of the stock market for lithium batteries caused the companies to start announcing it.

After Apple fired off the first shot, Warwick, Samsung, and other phone manufacturers began their next-generation product announcements as well. This year, everyone’s concentration was on one aspect of mobile phones.

That was the insanely long standby time.

It was not just phones, computers, cars, and other 3C battery using companies also jumped on the bandwagon.

As the head of the lithium battery market, 3C had experienced tremendous growth over the past few years. It had even grown to be one of the top three consumer terminals of lithium batteries.

Numerous tech companies made PowerPoint presentation type of press conferences. However, the automotive industry was different than tech. Due to a higher safety standard, their R&D cycle took more than a year to complete.

While the battery industry was undergoing huge changes, so did Lu Zhou’s life.

He was now worth over $400 million USD. He could not live in student apartments anymore.

Lu Zhou was reluctant to buy a house last time but he was not so distressed about it this time.

After all, Citibank gave him a four percent annual interest rate for his large bank account. Princeton’s salary was nothing compared to this.

The stubborn old white man finally gave in and handed the house keys to Lu Zhou.

Lu Zhou sat on the neat lawn of his new $300,000 USD house. He could not help but smile.

In addition to the 260-square meter size, the house had a front yard and garage as well. The surrounding neighborhood was quiet and peaceful. The neighbors were mainly foreign students or professors of the Institute for Advanced Study. Einstein’s former house was close by.

Other than it was slightly too big, Lu Zhou was happy with the rest.

Especially the decoration of the house; he liked that the most.

Perhaps it was because the former landlord was a history professor, he had good taste in furniture. Particularly, Lu Zhou liked the fireplace in the living room as it gave people a comfortable feeling.

It would be a pity to rent this artistic house out. Lu Zhou finally knew why the old man did not want to rent.

The only major change Lu Zhou did was to the kitchen. Everything else remained more or less the same.

Although he mainly ate at the Ivy Club, he still liked to cook for himself.

Lu Zhou looked at the kitchen being refurbished by renovation workers and suddenly, he had an idea.

It was almost Christmas.

Most Chinese people treated Christmas like Valentine’s day.

As a tall handsome loner, he had yet to celebrate this holiday before.

Maybe he should tidy up his new house and invite a few friends to have a housewarming party.

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