The three systems were set to their highest brightness and highest volume, then left to run mid-game. The resulting film of the test has been shared on YouTube, and while it has been speeded up 100 times, it still lasts a good nine minutes.

Thankfully, you don’t have to watch the whole video to find out the results of the test. The Nintendo 3DS died first, after 2 hours and 35 minutes. The PS Vita was next to go, at 3 hours and 47 minutes. The PSP-3000 outlasted both of the new wave consoles, continuing to function on its 2200mAh battery for nine hours, before finally giving up the ghost.

The Nintendo 3DS and Playstation Vita are both supposed to provide between 3 and 5 hours of gaming time, something that the Vita just managed in this test. Obviously turning down brightness and sound settings would help both consoles to deliver better results. Reducing the 3D effect on the 3DS would also help to enhance its battery life.

The PSP-3000 that was used in this test is fitted with Sony’s official extended life battery kit, which roughly doubles the performance of the original 1800mAh battery. In comparison, the 3DS is fitted with a standard 1300mAh battery, and the PS Vita has a standard 2210mAh battery inside.

Sony has already preempted concerns over PS Vita battery life, by announcing a separate battery pack, that can be plugged into the console. This will be sold separately, and it should provide enough power that “if you’re flying from New York to San Francisco or vice versa, you’ll have no concerns.”

Nintendo has not responded to the short battery life of the 3DS so far, but it is widely expected that a redesign of the console will appear at some point, given the previous path taken with the DS and DS Lite. A second generation 3DS might also include a second analogue stick built into it, to circumvent the need for the Circle Pad Pro peripheral that releases next month. In the meantime, it is possible to purchase a third party device to help double the battery life of your 3DS.

An unnamed developer who has two iPhone 4S models — one for day-to-day use that exhibited the battery problem, and another for development use that didn’t have the issue — found that he could make the issue appear on the unaffected unit by restoring it with a backup from the other phone.

That’s a clear indication that whatever was causing the battery issue lies somewhere in the iPhone’s software rather than the hardware (which Apple has said previously). That’s not to say there isn’t an additional hardware problem for some users. I had to get my iPhone 4S replaced within the first week because it would also black out at random times, in addition to indiscriminately draining battery life.

To better suss out the source of the iPhone 4S battery problem, we’ll need more than just this one test. If you have multiple iPhone 4S units on hand and are seeing the battery issue, let us know if you can replicate what this developer has seen.

Apple engineers are reportedly contacting new iPhone 4S customers to collect more information about a possible defect in the device’s battery, reports the Guardian.

Some customers (including VentureBeat’s very own Devindra Hardawar) are reporting the phone’s battery life will randomly and dramatically decrease — even when the phone isn’t in constant use. For instance, people are doing things like leaving their phones on a bedside table over night at full charge, only to wake up to find that the device is completely dead (or devoid of battery power).

According to the Guardian report, Apple engineers have asked some iPhone 4S customers to install a monitoring program on the device so that the company can better diagnose the problem.

There are a number of possible causes for the accelerated power drain from the iPhone 4S’ battery. The updated phone features a more powerful A5 dual-core processor, which enables it to perform a number of power-intensive tasks that weren’t possible on the previous phone model. Also, some of the Apple help message boards have suggested that a person could have corrupted contacts that were imported from MobileMe, iCloud or Google.

The 4S already has an unimpressive standby time (the total amount of time the device can stay powered when inactive) of 200 hours. That’s 100 hours less standby time than the iPhone 4, and 50 less than the first generation iPhone.

For now, Apple hasn’t determined exactly what’s causing the power drain, and until it does, it cannot come up with a definitive solution.

Have you experienced phantom power draining on your new iPhone 4S? Let us know in the comments.

Miller, a security consultant at Accuvant, said he tried to make a MacBook “smart battery” explode, since the project was all in fun and videos of exploding batteries are big draws on YouTube. But he hasn’t been able to make that happen yet. Had he done so, he could have had one of the most popular talks at Black Hat and caused considerable alarm among a variety of vendors and consumers. It’s also another lesson that shows that if you put the intelligence of computing into an otherwise dumb device, that new smart device will be subject to hacking, as has been proven over and over again.

“I set out to see if I could hack the firmware of a battery,” he said. “I couldn’t make it explode. I took over the battery. It was fun, and I did cool stuff.”

Miller had to go through a long process to figure out which chips were used in the battery — some controllers and circuit protection chips from Texas Instruments. He conducted experiments to find out how the chips operated, how they communicated between the operating system and the battery’s charger, and then compared them to online manuals and other published data. He found that Apple had left a default password unchanged that gave him entry into a chip so that he could manipulate the settings for the chip. (Apple can try to fix this problem in the future, but Miller figures it wouldn’t be hard to crack the 32-bit password). Apple has not yet responded to a request for comment.

Smart batteries such as those used in Apple’s MacBooks can be used to charge a battery more efficiently and report back to the operating system (and the user) the exact percentage charge remaining on the battery. The computer can thus talk to the firmware running on the chips within the battery. That firmware controls the charging process and safety parameters for the battery, which govern when to shut off charging to prevent overheating. Current, voltage and temperature can be calibrated.

Miller found it easy to change the settings on the batteries so that they were no longer recognized by the computer. This essentially “bricked” the batteries. He accidentally bricked his own machine a number of times. Once, he took a fried motherboard into an Apple store and they asked him what happened.

“I don’t know,” he told them, getting some laughs from the Black Hat crowd. “They should have a picture of me on the wall.”

Once he figured out how to break into the firmware, Miller then figured out how to change the settings of the battery and showed the code that proved that he did so. He is sharing his slides as well as atool that allows people to change the default passwords on their batteries. But that will only work so long as Apple makes no changes.

The dangers of hacking a battery remain theoretical so far. Coupled with a browser exploit, a malevolent hacker could send a virus or some other malware to a target. That virus could then deliver a payload such as sending commands to the battery to make it inoperable. That’s not as dangerous to a computer as wiping its hard disk, Miller said. But if someone could actually make a battery catch on fire from afar, that would be very dangerous.

Miller has no plans to undertake such hacking projects. But he continues with his battery research.

The company is finalizing its term sheets for the remaining $10 million of the round, which should be closed sometime later this week, Aquion Energy’s vice president of business and market development Ted Wiley told VentureBeat. He confirmed that Foundation Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers participated in the round.

“Everybody is just going through term sheets,” he said. “It’s not a question of if, just when it clears all the legal hurdles.”

The company creates batteries that can operate at a wide range of temperatures (between -10° C and 60° C) and use sodium ions rather than lithium ions to carry a current. The batteries cost less than $300 per kilowatt-hour of electricity stored, compared to between $500 and $1,000 per kilowatt-hour of electricity found in most modern lithium-ion batteries. The batteries are designed to last for more than 5,000 cycles — running from a full charge to a full discharge.

Aquion Energy strings the batteries together into arrays of 8 or more batteries that carry 15 volts. The company can also stack those arrays together in a circuit in series or parallel configurations to create a battery fixture that carries 100 volts. Aquion Energy plans to introduce strings that can carry 1,000 volts by the fall.

Batteries like those produced by Aquion Energy are useful because they can store electricity generated by non-conventional sources — such as wind turbines or solar panels — and release the electricity gradually. That helps alleviate strain on a power grid that might be overloaded if too many sources of energy feed electricity into the grid all at once. The batteries can also release additional electricity in peak-demand times, such as hot days or in the future when there are thousands of electric car chargers on the grid.

“We are electron source agnostic, these are batteries for any kind of grid, any stationary energy storage,” Wiley said. “We would be interested in telecom backup markets, off-grid renewables, all the way up to peak shaving and grid-level services.”

The company has raised $5 million from a mix of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and a loan from the Department of Energy. It has a production plant in Pittsburgh, Pa., that is producing demonstration models of the batteries. The company plans to create a high-volume production facility sometime next year that will produce enough batteries to store 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity.

Most of the concerns for electric car buyers center around how long it takes to charge the car and how far it is able to drive, according to the report. Electric cars are typically limited in how far they will go on a charge, and they can take a long time to recharge. It can take up to 5 hours for some vehicles to charge completely from a dry battery to a full charge. The Nissan Leaf, one of the cheapest electric cars on the market, can only travel around 100 miles before needing to recharge.

Most electric car buyers were concerned about how much money they would save by using an electric car instead of a gasoline-powered car. A quarter of the respondents — the largest segment in the report — said the cost savings over fuel mattered most. That’s because gasoline prices have risen to $4 or more in most places across the United States since the price of crude oil futures rose to around the $100 mark a few months ago.

Only 15 percent of electric car buyers said they were concerned about the cost of an electric car, which can range from $32,780 for the Nissan Leaf to $109,000 for the supercharged Tesla Roadster. (The Roadster can also travel twice as far as the Leaf before the battery runs dry.) The Model S, Tesla Motors’ next car, will come in three different models that can travel between 160 miles and 300 miles before needing a recharge and will cost anywhere from $57,400 for the cheapest model to $77,400 for the model that can travel farthest.

Nissan has also released some information about Leaf buyers that supports the report. Most Leaf owners drove an average of 7 miles per trip and spent about 2 hours charging the car with a 220-volt charger. Leaf owners are also in the top 15 percent of households with regards to income, according to the report. That means they are much more likely to be able to afford some of the higher priced electric cars than typical car buyers who simply need something that will take them from point A to point B as cheaply as possible.

The report also suggests that electric car buyers prefer plug-in electric hybrid cars, which have an internal combustion engine and use batteries and electric motors to improve the fuel efficiency of the car. Plug-in hybrids like the Fisker Karma can achieve fuel efficiency ratings of up to 100 miles per gallon, and can travel much further than plug-in electric cars, so they are more practical in countries like the United States where the population tends to do a lot of long-distance driving.

The survey included around 7,000 respondents in 13 countries, including the United States, China and several countries in Europe.

Offshore wind farm Cape Wind needs buyers for its power — The large, expensive and controversial Massachusetts wind farm needs customers, the Associated Press writes. Half of its 468-megawatt capacity has been sold to National Grid, but the other half has been turned down by top state utility NStar, which said it could find cheaper alternative energy elsewhere. Siemens is in talks to help finance the project, Bloomberg reports. The wind farm would use 130 of Siemens’ wind turbines.

Honda could launch electric car in China — The company unveiled the electric version of its Fit at the Los Angeles Auto Show, and plans to roll out electric vehicles in 2012 in Japan and the U.S. China has a “good chance” of seeing Honda’s electric cars, the company president said, according to Dow Jones Newswires. The Chinese government has made a strong commitment to electric vehicles, though BYD’s electrid hybrid reportedly stumbled due to the lack of charging infrastructure — so Honda must be assuming that will be in place by 2012 and beyond.

California to create carbon market — State regulators have approved the development of an exchange that will allow the top pollution emitters to use a market-based system to reduce emissions, Triple Pundit reports. The market would set allowances on emissions for top polluters that will decrease annually after 2014, and help set a price point that would drive long-term investment into energy efficiency and cleantech.

Tobacco could help build highly efficient batteries – Researchers at the University of Maryland have used a virus hosted by tobacco to improve energy capacity of batteries, CleanTechnica reports. The result is a battery that has 10 times the energy capacity of a traditional lithium-ion battery.

China plans to invest $601 billion in the smart grid –The money will go to develop the smart grid over the next decade, according to China Securities Journal. The program would promote applications like smart appliances, virtual health care and vehicle-to-vehicle communications, eco-business.com reports.

Logitech announced today the launch of a solar-powered wireless keyboard (pictured), as well as an app that will track power level and ambient light. The sleek, thin keyboard (one-third of an inch thick) retails for $79 and can stay charged for three months without light.

Nissan plans to launch three more all-electric vehicles in the United States in the next four years after first releasing the all-electric Leaf in limited markets this December. Next up, the company has plans for an electric Infiniti car, a small commercial van and a small urban car, the Detroit News writes. The company plans to produce 250,000 electric vehicles a year, AP reports.

Chinese company JinkoSolar, coming off a fresh IPO, reported expectations-beating third quarter results and raised its sales forecast for the year, Reuters reports. The news triggered a 24 percent rise in shares an all-time high of $37.34. The company’s results reflect an overall surge in solar demand this year.

South Korea pledged to invest over $8 billion in offshore wind farms over about eight years, Reuters reports. For starters, the country will build 20 turbines by 2013, then aim for 2,500 megawatts of capacity by 2019.

Ener1 announced a $40 million deal with the Russian Federal Grid Company to develop battery storage systems, starting with the implementation of large-scale emergency backup power systems in Sochi, which will host the winter Olympics in 2014.

Are you a green executive or entrepreneur? If so, sign up now for GreenBeat 2010 — the year’s seminal conference on the smart grid — November 3-4 at Stanford University. World leaders in smart grid initiatives will debate how the new “Super Grid” is creating huge opportunities in cars, energy storage, and renewables. GreenBeat 2010 is hosted by VentureBeat and SSE Labs of Stanford University. Go here for full conference details.

Startup Fenix has created a plug-and-play portable lead-acid battery for developing countries where access to electricity is intermittent. The ReadySet (pictured, left) can power LED lights, cell phones, netbooks and wireless networks, and can last up to three years. The battery also has power generation options that allow it to be connected to a solar panel and bicycle, which users can ride to pump power to the battery. Fenix says its product is geared towards the 1.6 billion people worldwide who live without power, and another 1 billion that deal with regular blackouts. The product also aims to alleviate health problems associated with kerosene lighting, which emits CO2 emissions and causes fires.

Chinese solar module manufacturer Daqo is looking to raise $115 million with a listing of 8 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange, priced between $10.50 and $12.50 each. It’s a part of the rebound of Chinese IPOs in the U.S. market, the Wall Street Journal reports, noting that Beijing real estate website SouFun and restaurant company Country Style Cooking both posted sharp gains in IPOs last month. Earlier this year, Daqo postponed a January filing seeking to raise $82 million.

GE has created a residential electric car charger adapted from its WattStation, and teamed up with ServiceMagic for installation. As Green Tech Media notes, GE and Schneider Electric’s entries into this market could bode poorly for startups – look for consolidation and a market dominated by big companies.

Are you a green executive or entrepreneur? If so, sign up now for GreenBeat 2010 — the year’s seminal conference on the smart grid — November 3-4 at Stanford University. World leaders in smart grid initiatives will debate how the new “Super Grid” is creating huge opportunities in cars, energy storage, and renewables. GreenBeat 2010 is hosted by VentureBeat and SSE Labs of Stanford University. Go here for full conference details and to apply for the 2010 Innovation Competition. Early-bird tickets are available until October 15th.

Battery company Ener1 is selling $20 million in stock

Energy management startup Hara seems to be on an upward swing and could become a prime acquisition target, Green Tech Media says. The company makes software that monitors energy use (water, gas and electricity) and yesterday landed the city of Philadelphia as a customer. The company’s strategy targets corporations as well, and it has signed up big names like Apple, Coca-Cola, Safeway and News Corp. Green Tech Media’s article notes the company now has 40 customers and tripled its workforce in the past 16 months.

Irish energy company Gaelectric has raised $18 million from European private equity, which will be used to reserve 960 megawatts of transmission capacity for wind energy developments in Montana. The company will work with transmission operators Bonneville Power Administration and NorthWestern Energy.

First Solar could be bolstered by a new California rule that will require state utilities to get one-third of their power from renewable sources by 2020, which is the most stringent requirement of any state in the U.S. An article by Bloomberg suggests other companies that could get a bump as a result: Trina Solar, SMA Solar Technology and Vestas Wind Systems.

The FCC ruling on white space spectrum could have implications for the smart grid, Earth2Tech reports. Now that a portion of airwaves are freed up, companies could build a white space smart grid network, using the network to reach hard-to-cover rural areas. Spectrum Bridge is one startup that is testing that.

Publicly-traded Evergreen Solar has replaced its CEO, a sign of the company’s troubled times of late, which Green Tech Media details. Company stock is trading at 59 cents a share, and the problem seems to be that its technology has become obsolete. Its modules are also too expensive to compete in a solar market that has seen technological advancements and price drops since Evergreen’s IPO ten years ago. Former COO Michael El-Hillow will replace Richard Feldt.

A123 opens largest lithium-ion battery plant in the U.S.

Siemens has launched a renewable energy business in India, focusing on wind and solar. It has hired 30 employees and plans to grow to 100. The company was persuaded in part by government and economic incentives. CleanTechnica notes India is one of the fastest-growing cleantech markets thanks to a growing wind sector and a strong solar industry.

Amp announced today it has signed an agreement to electrify a big-brand SUV for a major automaker, saying it should finish within two months — but the company didn’t name names. Amp is behind the electricfications of the Saturn Sky and Chevrolet Equinox. A statement touted the company’s “scalability and nimbleness” to help manufacturers quickly go into mass production from a pre-existing model.

Smart grid networking player Grid Net announced a partnership today with Sprint that will connect meters and routers on its smart grid platform through the carrier’s 4G network. Pairing the sexy and fast 4G network with smart meter communications could be a strong selling tool — in Grid Net’s case, it means faster data transfer paired with secure WiMax products. Grid Net is unique — and alone — in the smart grid field for championing the use of the WiMax protocol in the ongoing protocol war between smart grid companies.

Aurora Biofuels is no more. The company announced today it has changed its name to Aurora Algae, effectively repositioning itself in a crowded biofuels market by no longer tying its name or products to just biofuels. Instead, it will leverage its proprietary strain of algae to produce pharmaceuticals, protein bars and oils that can be used in hand creams – a telling move in a biofuels world, where companies are plagued by investor reluctance, high start-up costs and technology that, while promising, is years away from commercialization.

The average Nissan Leaf buyer is a baby boomer. The 19,000 or so would-be Leaf buyers who have reserved a spot in line for Nissan’s all-electric car are, on average, 45 years old, earn $125,000 a year and own a home. Three-quarters of buyers to date opted for the SL trim package on the world’s first all-electric, mass-produced car. The package includes a solar panel on the rear spoiler and allows for a $700 fast-charge option; it retails for $33,500 before government rebates. Most buyers already drive a hybrid like the Prius, but few have ever owned a Nissan – a good sign for the carmaker’s broadening allure.

The White House says no to solar panels on its roof. A group of college activists with the campaign “Put Solar On It” pushed President Obama to put solar on the White House roof but were “politely rebuffed,” the New York Times reports.

Tesla, PowerSecure and Vicor added to NASDAQ Clean Edge Green Energy Index. The index tracks the performance of publicly traded cleantech companies. The index is reranked every March and September, and in this round, removed five companies: Ballard Power Systems, Capstone Turbine, Evergreen Solar, FuelCell Energy and UQM Technologies.

China has become the top country for cleantech investment, outstripping the U.S., according to a report from Ernst & Young. China’s renewable energy investment dollars outdoes the U.S. nearly two to one, Green Chip Stocks reports, and installed wind power capcity in the U.S. has dropped to its lowest in three years. Germany, India, the U.K., Portugal and Spain also topped the list. Read the full report here.

Large-scale solar plant builder BrightSource could go public within three years, GigaOm reports, citing a report from Next Up research. (The report isn’t available online.) The story notes that an IPO would still be a few years off, thanks to the reluctance of venture capitalists to invest in solar — one example being Solyndra’s axed public offering plans. But BrightSource seems to be headed in the IPO direction: it recently won a federal loan guarantee and raised $150 million in its most recent round of financing, bringing total funds raised to over $300 million.

GM, Itochu charge up battery startup Sakti3 with $4.2 million, with GM reportedly proffering $3.2 million of that total. Sakti3 is working on a smaller, cheaper lithium-ion battery that could extend the range of electric vehicles currently on the market. A GM spokeswoman says it’s years away from commercialization, but the technology could eventually wind up in GM’s trucks and cars.

Come launch time in December, the Nissan Leaf will have an edge over the Chevrolet Volt thanks to sweeter state rebate policies – states like California and Tennessee are giving Leaf buyers additional incentives, but shutting out the Volt. We’ve reported before that the Volt got the short shrift from the state of California, which wouldn’t extend single drivers of the Volt access to the HOV lane (though that perk was granted to Prius owners), and also won’t give it the $5,000 rebate it’s giving the Nissan Leaf, since the Volt will have tailpipe emissions (the gas tank kicks in after the electric battery’s 40-mile range runs out), whereas the Leaf is all-electric.

Fire and ice: SunPower and Ice Energy will team up to build a pilot energy storage project, reportedly for Target. The system will use SunPower’s rooftop solar panels to generate power. When the sun wanes, Ice Energy’s ice-based storage system will take over, using power stored from the day to cool the building and cutting peak-time energy costs.

Audi may have blundered in naming its electric cars e-Tron – the French word, étron, essentially means “dung,” says Green Car Reports. If that’s the case, then it’s even more unfortunate that e-Tron is slated to present at the Paris Motor Show next month.

Technology Review has the scoop:

The company boldly claims that its system, a kind of battery-ultracapacitor hybrid based on barium-titanate powders, will dramatically outperform the best lithium-ion batteries on the market in terms of energy density, price, charge time, and safety. Pound for pound, it will also pack 10 times the punch of lead-acid batteries at half the cost and without the need for toxic materials or chemicals, according to the company.

The implications are enormous and, for many, unbelievable. Such a breakthrough has the potential to radically transform a transportation sector already flirting with an electric renaissance, improve the performance of intermittent energy sources such as wind and sun, and increase the efficiency and stability of power grids–all while fulfilling an oil-addicted America’s quest for energy security.

The ZENN car (pictured atop) will be the first commercial application of the Texas-based EEStor’s new energy system.

Kleiner led a $3 million round of venture capital into the company. We wrote about it here. Morton Topfer, former vice chairman of Dell and mentor to Michael Dell, is on the board.