What’s the most annoying part of your favorite gadget, be it your laptop, your phone or your portable media player? In fact, what do they all have in common? Here’s one vote for terrible battery life. (I have a cheap-o Philips digital audio player whose battery lasts, I think, 27 seconds before dying.) So here’s hoping that Energizer’s new zinc air battery, to debut at CES next month, isn’t merely hot air.

The new battery, officially the Zinc Air Prismatic, while not being any larger than current batteries, supposedly lasts as much as three times as long as your everyday lithium or alkaline battery. Très passionnant.

This actually has the capacity to be a bigger deal than not. I can’t tell you how many times companies give the same song and dance that they can’t improve battery life because there’s but so much juice they can tap into with existing battery technology. It’s a chemistry problem more than anything else.