One of the things preventing truly sleek and ultra-slim wearables are the batteries needed to power them. If you want all-day battery life, it will likely require components that bulk up your device.
Samsung and LG, however, are working on slim and flexible batteries that will make for more sophisticated wearables in the future, which they showed off at this week's InterBattery 2015 event in Seoul.
Samsung SDI, the tech giant's battery-manufacturing arm, unveiled two new technologies at the event. The flexible Band battery, for example, is designed for smartwatches and has thus far been bent around a human wrist more than 50,000 times without incident.
"When the battery is applied on the bands of any smartwatch, it will greatly enhance the battery capacity to over 50 percent," Samsung said in a statement.
Samsung's ultra-slim Stripe battery, meanwhile, "can bend and conform freely as a fiber and is equipped with innovative energy density." At 0.3mm thick, it's a bit more flexible than the Band battery, and could be used in for a necklace, hairband, t-shirt accessories, and more.
As reported by ZDNet, LG Chem teased something known as the "wire battery." It can bend into a smaller radius, making it ideal for watch bands, the site said.
The flexible battery market is a good place to be, according to a new report from MarketsandMarkets, which estimates earnings of $618 million by 2020.
Researchers have been testing bendable batteries for years: A team of scientists at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 2012 developed a high-performance, malleable all-solid lithium-ion battery that can provide power now matter how much of a beating it takes.
A few months later, a group of researchers claimed to have created a thin, stretchable battery that can be expanded up to three times its size without loss of power or performance.