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HP Introduces New Technology to Save Mobile Battery Life

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the batmax-beware dept.

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."

49 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. HP innovation! by BWJones · · Score: 4, Insightful


    Now, this is the kind of thinking and research development that I would expect from HP! This technology combined with optimizations in the OS like Quartz could be a real boost to the way we interact with our portable devices, allowing for progressive dynamic layering of items that are important to view. Shoot, one could even link it into search engines to render only what is relevant for display.

    Now if they could just put a little innovation into their calculators again....

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    Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    1. Re:HP innovation! by ackthpt · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Now, this is the kind of thinking and research development that I would expect from HP!

      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
    2. Re:HP innovation! by BWJones · · Score: 2, Funny

      And yet you pull out an insightful reply, while beating everyone else to FP?

      I'm cool like that. :-)

      Well... the slashdot world needs more people like you. Right on.

      Thank you.

      --
      Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
    3. Re:HP innovation! by friedmud · · Score: 4, Informative

      I recently had a similar experience to "highlighting of what you're looking at" and I enjoyed it.

      It came with the new Xorg+New Nvidia Drivers+KDE Beta... with those three things you can turn on transparency where every window EXCEPT the one that is currently in focus is transparent.

      Combine this with "Focus follows mouse" and it basically "highlights" the thing you are currently working on... while everything else melts into the background... literally!

      If they integrated this with flat panels I could see it being useful for the only thing that was at full brightness is the window that is currently active... while the rest has been dimmed. I think this is pretty close to what the research in this story did (except it looks like they might have been even more fine grained than that).

      Not only would it be a usability improvement... but also a savings in power. I'm interested to see if they can bring it to market!

      Friedmud

    4. Re:HP innovation! by iowannaski · · Score: 4, Insightful

      While it would be incredibly cool if this technology could be used with PC LCD monitors, don't get too excited yet.

      LCD screens generally rely on a single backlight for illumination. Swithing to multiple backlights is certainly possible, but don't expect to be able to control power consumption on a pixel by pixelbasis anytime soon.

      --
      i forget
    5. Re:HP innovation! by pantherace · · Score: 4, Informative

      Kcontrol -> Desktop -> Window Behavior -> Translucency Tab. That controls transparency, and the Focus tab has Focus follows Mouse.

    6. Re:HP innovation! by exp(pi*sqrt(163)) · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You must be one of those people who read Wired. The guy was karma whoring. He strung together a bunch of buzzwords and said absolutely nothing.

      --
      Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
    7. Re:HP innovation! by the_ed_dawg · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Now, this is the kind of thinking and research development that I would expect from HP!
      The idea of turning off unused sections of the screen was proposed by Flinn et al. in 1999. They recommended that adaptivity be implemented at the window manager level with hardware support to actually change the screen intensity. Among other ideas, they suggested changing the window managers to "snap to borders," to prevent applications from being in multiple different lightable blocks. A similar idea was implemented by Chang et al. over the course of the past few years. They implemented a system that adaptively changes the backlighting of LCDs based upon the statistical properties of displayed videos. I saw their product at a conference in August (supposedly their third version), and it was pretty sweet. They had made a little ASIC that would perform all sorts of computations on the frames and display the videos at the full frame rate. You couldn't really tell that the intensity was changing, either. The first two versions were purely software, so I've heard. Not too bad from an academic group.

      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.
  2. Self Defeating by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Watch a typical Windows user sometime. What's the first thing they do to whatever application they open?

    If you said "Maximize it!", then you're right! Sadly, this ends up being self-defeating. :-/

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    1. Re:Self Defeating by mrchaotica · · Score: 4, Funny

      Or they're using IE and some website has set their window to be fullscreen for them, which is the more common scenario in my experience.

      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    2. Re:Self Defeating by AKAImBatman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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
    3. Re:Self Defeating by Luthair · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because Windows and Maximize are so often used on mobile devices!

      This is intended for phones, PDAs, media players, etc. not for laptops etc. If you RTFA you'd have noticed the study was done on PDAs and MP3 players.

    4. Re:Self Defeating by Rei · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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!
    5. Re:Self Defeating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I don't understand, what's wrong with maximizing a window such that it should be associated with the evil world of Windows? What's not to like about using as much of the screen as possible so you can see as much of what you're working on as possible? Does the stereotypical Linux user configure their WM so as to remove the maximize button, or something?

    6. Re:Self Defeating by Prophetic_Truth · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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+
    7. Re:Self Defeating by King_TJ · · Score: 3, Informative

      You might be right about Windows users tending to maximize their apps on the screen, but I can assure you it's often NOT just because they bought poor quality monitors.

      Rather, it's often because the apps put enough controls and toolbars up that maximizing is the only way to comfortably work in the software.

      (With most of the MIDI/music sequencers and hard disk recording packages, it feels like you never have enough room for the mixer sliders, time counter window, musical notation window, and so on. They may as well hard code maximizing windows into those things!)

      Even if you own a top-notch flat panel that does 1600x1200 resolution - the fonts are going to look awfully small at that point. (And yes, you can select "large fonts" in the Windows control panel, but that tends to be self-defeating -- sacrificing most of the screen real-estate you gained by going to a higher resolution in the first place.) 1024x768 is pretty much the "most common" resolution I see Windows desktops running in (assuming you don't have a wide-screen type display) - and I think it's because it's roughly the best compromise between resolution and overall font size. (Especially for older PC users, they really struggle with apps like Excel when you crank the resolution up higher - regardless of monitor sharpness.)

    8. Re:Self Defeating by rainman_bc · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm a linux user running in 1280x1024 on the cheapest LCD flat panel I could find... what does that say about me?

      It says you're a Linux user on the cheapest LCD flat panel you could find. Duh!

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    9. Re:Self Defeating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Windows users tending to maximize their apps on the screen, but I can assure you it's often NOT just because they bought poor quality monitors [..] the apps put enough controls and toolbars up that maximizing is the only way to comfortably work in the software.

      Let me guess - the thought that a user might actually want to be able to see more content never, ever, ever entered your mind? AND that the major applications that many Windows users use (Firefox and Thunderbird) are completely cross-platform, look and behave similarly everywhere.

      Although I personally find fullscreen document editing glorious in a "don't bother me" kind of way, shutting out everything but the task that I want to concentrate on.

    10. Re:Self Defeating by browngb · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have two 19" monitors running dual display, because I decided I needed more desktop. Turns out I just have one app maximized to both monitors at once all the time, in stead of 60 small windows. The reason for it is pretty simple, I don't want to continually be scrolling. It's just much more comfortable to have everything laid out in front of me. If I need access to something else, Alt+Tab is just a click away.

      --
      Generally, I get bored with my replies and give up on making sense halfway through.
    11. Re:Self Defeating by Karl+Tacheron · · Score: 2, Informative

      Most desktop monitors that have a 1600x1200 resolution are close to the same DPI as a 1024x768 diaplay. The reason not everyone has one of these is because they are prohibitively expensive ($700+).

    12. Re:Self Defeating by yason · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

  3. Creative Displays by null+etc. · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'd like to be the developer that codes the algorithm for dimming the unimportant parts of pr0n images. I'd need plenty of research images, of course.

  4. in other news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    battery life of your cell phone can be extended by

    TURNING THE FUCKING PHONE OFF

  5. Meh.. by Staplerh · · Score: 4, Funny

    Meh, I can buy a sticker that promises to do most of this, and all for a few small payments. Heck, it was even covered on Slashdot so it has to be true!

    --
    "There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
    - Bob Dylan
  6. savings? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Now if they can just figure out how to stop the laptop from burning my privates when i compute naked.

    1. Re:savings? by clutch110 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Why are you mixing the military, nudity and computers anyway? Don't you get court martialed for that?

    2. Re:savings? by displaced80 · · Score: 3, Funny


      ...when i compute naked

      ... to how many digits?

      :-)

      --
      What's the frequency, Kenneth?
  7. Unimportant pixels by Faust7 · · Score: 4, Funny

    worked with Ranganathan to develop software that monitors a PDA's screen when it is in use and automatically dims the unimportant pixels.

    Occasionally I get devices from companies that have proactively singled out these unimportant pixels.

    --
    The coolest voice ever.
  8. OLEDs by stryck9 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe if they put some money in OLED research, they wouldn't need to worry about backlights at all.

  9. Its great! I am using it right now! by Mr.+Flibble · · Score: 5, Funny

    It is incredible... but I can only see what I am typing... and my mouse cursor sometimes.

    This is my blog I am posting to right? Must be... Cant tell though...

    --
    Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
  10. OLED by amembleton · · Score: 4, Informative

    Won't these problems be solved with OLEDs?

    As far as I understand, Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) will emit light from each pixel much like an LED does. This will not require a battery sucking back-light, and if necessary it would be easy to dim areas of the screen, just make parts of it darker/black and less/no light will be emitted from it.

    More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLED

    1. Re:OLED by 0rbit4l · · Score: 2, Informative

      That's exactly the point of this research - the point is to develop user interfaces that leverage OLEDs to dim the parts of the screen that aren't in use. If you read the article, dimming parts of the display is exactly what they're talking about. The key isn't the LEDs that allow dimming - the key is the user interface research that these guys did to determine what people find acceptable. What's most interesting is that some interfaces are actually preferable to an "all on" solution (for instance, an interface that dims - but does not black out - parts of a document that you aren't currently reading, and which you can scroll through).

  11. Well, but how really useful is this? by kompiluj · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't know - is this a useful technique or just another trick? When the salesman tells you that laptop runs 6 hrs. on system battery, but only if you don't touch it - how useful is this for you?
    Reminds me of other fallacies: the gigahertz myth, the LCD display reaction-time. myth

    --
    You can defy gravity... for a short time
  12. After reading TFA... by winstonmeister · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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!
    1. Re:After reading TFA... by crummynz · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or is it...sentient? :P

      Yup. The irony is, the CPU time it takes to keep this artificial intelligence running nullifies the effect of dimming pixels you aren't reading :/

      --
      ~ Crummy
  13. LCDs and Dimming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  14. Maybe if they refine the idea by jd · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The technology has been around for some time to track where the eye is focussed. If they only fully lit hat one part of the screen, dimming with a function of distance, they'd save a lot more power, as they wouldn't need to determine what was important.


    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)
  15. Seriously... by paithuk · · Score: 2, Funny
    Or, rather than relying on the display, an LED light could blink to communicate the arrival of an email.
    Are they having a laugh?
  16. Tempting homebrew sol'n ; article unclear in part by macklin01 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Reading the parts of the article on MP3 player displays really leaves me tempted:

    Why not add a switch so that the display only shows when it's pressed? (I know that some players do this anyway, but not my Rio S10.) I rarely look at the screen anyway. I bet it wouldn't be that hard to open it up and solder one in ... (Then again, maybe it'd be better to just try a firmware hack instead ...)

    I was a little fuzzy on the article on how they could dim parts of a normal LCD monitor screen, however. Isn't there only one backlight, so it's all or nothing? Are they proposing a grid of backlights instead of just one large one? Or is it that when the pixels are dimmed, the transistors use less power? That part wasn't very clear to me after reading TFA. -- Paul

    --
    OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
  17. I worry about burn-in... by Junior+J.+Junior+III · · Score: 4, Funny

    When there are two boob-shaped areas of my screen that appear to be burned in more than the rest of my screen, then people will know about my, ahem, viewing habits.

    --
    You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
  18. Xterms by MoobY · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  19. Stupid question, but... by Junior+J.+Junior+III · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If this is really so important, why not switch to white text on black background for mobile devices? This would maximize the amount of dim pixels.

    --
    You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
  20. Maybe they used an Intel Centrino laptop by sampo · · Score: 2, Informative

    While HP was busy researching this, Intel actually implemented a wide array of power saving measures for displays in their centrino chipset, including Intel DPST which can modify the backlight on the fly depending on the screen content to save power.

    http://developer.intel.com/technology/itj/2005/v ol ume09issue01/art05_perf_power/p04_gmch.htm

  21. DVDs by twelvemonkeys · · Score: 3, Insightful

    hmm... and how does this help me watch more DVDs on long flights?

  22. Re:hm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Okay, I'm sorry, I've just seen one too many ALOT on Slashdot today.

    I know, I know, language evolves, and it's futile to insist on keeping the purity of English as it has none, but damnit, I just can't take this alot business.

    Maybe I'm alittle too sensitive or should just relax abit but whenyou startrunning wordstogether forno apparentreason wherethehellwillyoustop?

    It's "A LOT", as in "A little" "a purple wotsit" "a mountain" It doesn't suddenly lose it's space just for being a lot.

    This rant has been a public service announcement by Captain Anal.

  23. Old news by pointyhairedmba · · Score: 3, Funny

    I've had this so called "technology" since Windows 3.0. My computer would blue out the whole screen to save energy.

  24. OLEDs, STN, laptops and other silliness by neurocutie · · Score: 3, Insightful
    While their efforts are all well and good, there doesn't sound like there is much substance there when you here that one of the ideas is to resort to an blinking LED when an email arrives.

    1) Clearly moving quickly to a display technology that emits light efficiently ONLY WHERE YOU WANT IT, like OLEDs, is much smarter than the current backlit architecture, where you blast an array of FILTERS (devices design to THROW AWAY LIGHT) with a bright uniform backlight. The current LCD technology is about as stupid as it gets when it comes to energy efficiency.

    2) I am constantly amazed that no laptop company has yet make a laptop with EXCHANGEABLE displays. There are times, in the dark, where you want a bright color display, BUT there are other times when you would be much happier with a passive/reflective/no backlight display, which, by the way, is far more energy efficient. If I'm working outside, for example, writing a paper or whatever, I really would be happier with a simple STN reflective, LOW POWER, NO BACKLIGHT, perhaps even monochrome LCD (the type on those old Palm V's would be perfect: very high contrast, very low power). So why not have a laptop that you can simply plug in different display screens, depending on your anticipated usage ? I would venture to guess that a standard modern laptop with a TFT and a battery life of 3 hours, would last 6+ hours using a passive STN display.

    The fact is that in most daily human environments other than in a movie theater, it is expected that there will be sufficient lighting to read magazines, write postcards, etc, etc. So laptop displays need to take advantage of this, rather than the current (stupid) brute force method of trying to drown out the environmental lighting with a light-producing display.

  25. Uncanny... by Dan+East · · Score: 2, Informative

    A couple people were discussing the possibility of this exact thing on the notebook forums I host:

    I like the idea though, Maybe if they could design a backlight that could just light say 2" around the mouse?

    At the time I thought the idea was a bit far-fetched - seems like the HP engineers think otherwise.

    When the new OLED technology becomes widespread this capability will be inherit to the display, and be controllable at the pixel-level. A simple color scheme using as much black as possible (ie white text on black) could conserve batteries significantly.

    Dan East

    --
    Better known as 318230.
  26. strange... by hitmark · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    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 :P

    --
    comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm