Archive for: battery life
- December 30, 2010 9:28 am
Two days ago, reports started circulating that RIM was having a difficult time with their new QNX OS and getting its power consumption under control on the PlayBook tablet. Such an argument is at least plausible given QNX’s origins — automotive and networking equipment. Such platforms aren’t normally designed with battery efficiency in mind. RIM however, has come forward and denied the reports of battery woes and PlayBook delays, and goes on to blame any current negative accounts as flawed and based off of “pre-beta units”:
Any testing or observation of battery life to date by anyone outside of RIM would have been performed using pre-beta units that were built without power management implemented. RIM is on track with its schedule to optimize the BlackBerry PlayBook’s battery life and looks forward to providing customers with a professional grade tablet that offers superior performance with comparable battery life
You didn’t expect RIM to actually voice any problems, did you? Nevertheless, problems or not, the PlayBook certainly has a lot of attention. It will be interesting to see just how well RIM utilizes QNX.
Don’t worry, Apple has you covered, actually, they really have you covered. So let’s say you are sitting, looking at interweb pr0n on that trust mobile filth device, and all of a sudden, your batter goes splat, nothing, won’t hold the charge, won’t allow you to view the lovely lady humps plastered through out the webs… What do you do? Give Apple a yell and they’ll tell ya it is no big deal, we have such a huge back stock of these things, we’ll just replace the entire iDevice! Here is a snippet from Apple’s site regarding replacement:
“If your iPad requires service due to the battery’s diminished ability to hold an electrical charge, Apple will replace your iPad for a service fee.”
I remember for the iPhone, only getting the option to have it serviced, now they’ll just replace the entire device for around $100. I mean, this actually isn’t isn’t the best thing for us end users. Well, I guess you do get a new device, but, all your personal data is now gone, unless you backed it up, which Apple recommends you do. We’ll see how this works out from users once they get their iPads in their hands, for now we’ll just have to wonder, is this something Apple is really planning on happening? Have they had some test units all have bad batteries?
Gizmodo <-> Apple
- November 16, 2009 4:22 am
The beauty of the Android platform is the ability to multi-task. Multi-tasking is a feature that such clever yet “not quite there” ideas such as Push Notifications just can’t compete with. On the Moto Droid, some people have been experiencing rather quick battery discharge times. Some unfamiliar with the platform or device may instantly credit it towards the processor juggling several apps at once in the background. But the real case is that it isn’t exactly multiple apps in the background, but instead multiple services. What’s the difference? Essentially the “app” is the everything we see as well as all of the code going on behind the scene. A service is the “thing” that is running when we close an app — it doesn’t have a UI.
In a nutshell, Android pauses most apps when we move to another app. Though some apps are poorly written and don’t stop or pause when we exit, continually eating away at battery and memory in the background. It’s a growing problem with new apps, especially apps being ported from the iPhone were devs are used to instant killing when closing the app. What to do? A simple task killer is a great way to handle rouge apps that sit in the background twiddling your processors figurative thumbs and eating your battery alive. A minor annoyance of the platform I guess but by no means the bottomless pit of horror that Apple leads us to believe background processes are, nor the utter mess that BP present on current versions of WinMo. Overall, this topic isn’t exactly Droid specific as it is common across all Android hardware and Android OS versions. The issue is definitely worth reading more into and in fact, a thread on the Droid Forums was what sparked the idea for this post. Just something I stumbled upon on my morning voyage through the interwebs that I felt like sharing with you all…..especially you new Droid owners 
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If you find yourself in Munich tomorrow, you may want to stop by the Texas Instrument unveiling of their latest baby: the CC2540. This alphabet/number line soup’s claim to fame is the fact that it takes up but a mere 6mm (squared) of space. That’s tiny. Naturally, because of the utter pittance of physical size, such an object has an equally minuscule appetite. Just how meager are the feeding requirements? Try an entire year of runtime on a single, lonely button battery. Ya. That’s pretty impressive. If you haven’t made much use of Bluetooth yet, one thing to make note of is the battery decimating characteristics of current iterations. This new, ultra low energy variant could allow mobile devices to last longer and by physically smaller. Good results don’t you think?
Although, with the recent announcement of WiFi-Direct, does anyone really care about anything Bluetooth related? I mean, they’ve taken their sweet time moving forward. The same can be said about WiFi technology as well (we’re looking at you Mr. “it took multiple years for N spec finalization). Still, do you really care?
Engadget
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Any gadget aficionado is more than likely very familiar with their local electrical outlets. Gadgets, especially feature rich, drool inducing gadgets love to suck batteries dry. Unfortunately, batteries have so far failed to keep up with the demands that all of these extra features demand of them. Thankfully, Sony is working on one of many solutions out there that looks to be pretty intriguing. The new batteries feature an Olivine-type material inside that is considerably more energy dense than Lithium-ion of current.
Specifically, the Sony made Olivine type batteries have an energy density of 95Wh/kg and a power density of 1800W/kg with an extended lifetime of 2,000 charge/discharge cycles! Even more impressive, Olivine batteries retain up to 80% of their original capacity through that 2,000 charge/discharge cycle. In comparison, Lithium-ion batteries start showing their 80% limit in as little as 300 charge/discharge cycles with some of the more recent lithium-ion attempts by Apple going as high as 1,000 charge/discharge cycles while still holding on to 80% of their original capacity. Perhaps even more important and note worthy is that these Olivine batteries can be charged up to 99% capacity in a mere 30 minutes! Not only do these little wonder batteries last substantially longer, they are much faster in recharging meaning less down time for you and your gadgets.
At first, power tools will be the only gadgets to get this new found technology with consumer electronics to follow not too long after. Excited?
Source: Gizmodo, Sony Insider
Ok, so the quote above is more or less paraphrased, but that is the gist of AMD’s latest admission. It refers to their battery life claims on mobile products…uh oh. In reality they aren’t the only ones. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that pretty much every battery life claim by any manufacturer is bogus and is a number that you could only possibly reach under “ideal” circumstances *read: not using the product and letting it sit there*, with the help of aligned planets to say the least. In order for AMD to redeem themselves they are also claiming they will be using a new method to test battery life halved between idle time (timing how long it takes a motionless machine to wind down) and by using 3D Mark 06. Better than before, but the new two test method is still far from perfect. Oh well, at least the realize their mistake and are trying to do better. So what’s your take on it?
Source: Slashdot
Does you iPhone 3G’s battery die when you most need it. By noon are you hunting around for an outlet? Don’t lie to yourself…of course you are. The iPhone’s main weakness is the battery life. I am a pretty heavy user in that I check about 60 feeds every couple of hours with NetNewsWire, send and receive between 4-500 text’s/emails total a day, browser Safari for a total of 1-2 hours, and genearlly about 30-40 minutes talking. I start at around 6:00am and by noon I’m down to about 20-30%. Not very great as you can see. Milliamp LTD has a solution. Available at ipodjuice.com, specifically for the iPhone 3G are stock 1150mAh and extended 1600mAh capacities. The 1600 offer a full 39% more battery capacity than the stock 1150mAh. Raw specs include:
I have no room to talk as my iPhone’s battery life sucks. However, you would think manufacturers would take past mistakes to heart and learn from them. It appears Palm can only do so much innovating at one time. The Pre’s batter is going to be the same size as the Palm Centro, not that great. 1150mAh-1350mAh is about what we can expect the Pre to ship with. Which in my opinion is way to small for a smartphone in the current time frame. Battery technology has not caught up with other exploading areas of electronics such as processing power. Because of that, the only real way to get around it are to build more efficient phones (hardware/software) and make the battery physically bigger. While there are many 3rd party batteries a smartphone owner can buy, the manufacturer of the smartphone should step up and stop being cheap and put a battery into the phone that can actually get the job done. “Thiness” isn’t everything! I’m looking at you Apple!
/rant
Source: Gizmodo
Have you ever been out and about and your phone dies, or your Mp3 player stops pumping out music? You either don’t have a charger with you or aren’t near a power outlet. Well two designers, Hyun-Joong Kim and Kwang-Seok Jeong, have come up with a brilliant idea. They designed a pair off sunglasses with dye solar cells that turn sun power into gadget power. All you have to do is plug the electronics of your choice into the power jack on the back of the glasses and you’re good to go! With the world becoming increasingly mobile, relying on electronics more and more, it is now more important than ever to keep them charged. You can get chargers built into backpacks, cases, mats, etc. But something like these glasses are very practical for your eyes and your gadgets. Availability isn’t known yet, but as soon as I know, I’ll let you know.
Source: Crave
