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HP Introduces New Technology to Save Mobile Battery Life
fenimor writes "HP researchers have developed new technology to save battery life on mobile devices. Targeting one of the main culprits of battery consumption -- the display -- they've developed an energy-aware solution that dims parts of the screen that aren't in use. Display battery life lasts from two to 11 times longer, depending on what the user is doing."
I admit I'm confused about how the computer knows things like which lines of text you're reading. Do you have to keep the cursor there, or something? Or is it...sentient? :P
Save the galaxy!
What? They're not supposed to just buy up some half-baked company that's struggling with quality issues and try to merge the two disparate entities together using words like "Synergy"?
Dang. It is a rebirth of HP!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You can't dim a 'portion' of a standard LCD monitor; the monitor is backlit by small flourescent tubes at the top and the bottom of the display, and it is those that take most power to drive. On desktops they have multiple tubes at the top and bottom (and you could shut one or two off to save power), but for notebooks they usually have only one, and by dimming that one you end up dimming the whole display, not a portion of the display.
If they can light up only a portion of the screen they must be using white LEDs or something like that where they can light up as many or as few as they want. If this is the case, i wouldnt hold my breath as to when it will reach the market.
Actually, the eye isn't equally sensitive to color, at all points, so you can gradually "bleed off" color as a function of distance, too.
For that matter, the eye doesn't see with a uniform resolution, so you can "skip" pixels as you move off-center.
Alternatively, you can say "screw it!" and represent all output with a row of 128 LEDs. This not only cuts down on power, but reduces the weight of portable systems, cuts down on environmental waste when the unit is recycled, and forces 99.9% of all the stupid idiots who just use computers for spreading viruses anyway to go out into the Real World and get something done.
(Hey, punch-cards worked just fine for ages, and they didn't go to 128 columns IIRC)
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Why can't this technology turn off the parts of the screen that are black (like text and fields) and dim the darker ones for programs that aren't using raster images?
:-)
Contrast. Unless you can modify the backlight at a per-pixel level, dimming a text area would actually decrease the readability.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I'm not sure that would defeat this technology; it may not dim on a window-level, but on a pixel activity level, cursor-closeness level, or something of the sort.
Of course, I'd love to see a solution using electrochromic polymer (needing a single application of charge to change state, not continuous) pixels with an adjustable backlight for when it's dark. In bright light conditions, you'd have a screen like an adapting piece of paper. During daylight, you'd only need power when a pixel changes, so the battery life would theoretically be huge. Plus, I would expect it to be easier on the eyes. Anyone aware of any research on this front?
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
This is excellent! I'm constantly using full screen consoles with white text on a black background. This technology may give command line users excellent uptimes!
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
You're actually correct with your assumption. With CRTs, Black areas use less voltage than white areas. But, I dont think it works the same way with lcds.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
that they are not rethinking the screen totaly. i have seen shots of a screen tech where you dont need a backlight as the screens active elements reflects light as if it was a hard surface.
:P
the funnyest thing was that they could remove the backside totay, basicly turning the screen transparent, and still be able to get a clear picture of the active elements of the image shown.
and you didnt need to have constanct power on like on a lcd or oled display.
the powersaveings on mobile devices with screens like these would be gigantic.
only problem is that i cant find any info on colordepth or refresh rate at the moment
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Yes, HP's *development* is great. If the article is accurate, they seem to have fine-grained control over the whole screen. Chang et al. have the adaptivity right but lack the LCD development to get more than full-screen control. There's absolutely no way that an academic group can compete with the development power of a private company. I'm really glad to see that HP has gotten on the bandwagon because I spend most of my time working in a terminal and/or text editor. :) However, I'd just like to clarify that people have been proposing and implementing ideas like this for at least 6 years before we raise our hopes too much for HP's return.
There are two types of people: those prepared for the zombie apocalypse and those who will be eaten.
No, but only few Linux users I know maximize everything. Since you have (or you can configure for yourself) a powerful windowing environment that actually allows you to multitask also visually, you _can_ work with more than one running program at a time. That usually goes along having focus-follows-mouse, window management in a separate process than applications updating windows, selecting windows into a group and managing them as a unit and other more or less traditional X GUI idioms. With Windows I'm totally stuck that way and the "maximize and flip with alt-tab" is the only practical method to use Windows. It's worth nothing to arrange your windows to something sensible because you can't practically utilize that setup anyway. That's why people use WIndows like that.