If any press is good press, then the lithium-ion battery has had a great few weeks in the spotlight at the center of Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 smartphone failures. Despite the concern over the devices bursting into flames — the blame of which is probably better directed at one of the device's other components — the lithium battery is in no danger of losing its spot atop commercial battery technologies anytime soon. The ubiquitous technology meets the two most important criteria for batteries used in consumer electronics and electric vehicles: It can store large amounts of energy for its size, and it can be recharged thousands of times. But if batteries are ever to reach their full potential as a geopolitically disruptive technology , they still have a long way to go in improving energy density and lifetime and, perhaps more important, reducing cost.