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Linux-Based Phone Lasts 200 Hours on Standby
An anonymous reader writes "Motorola is showing off a Linux/Java phone with a claimed battery life of 200 hours on standby, or 200-250 minutes when talking. If those figures prove true, Linux sure is improving quickly on the power management front. That kind of battery life also suggests that the E895 might be the first single-chipset phone ever to run a complex OS, whether Symbian, Windows Mobile, or Linux. Other features are user-upgradable memory, 1.3MP camera, video capture, multimedia slideshows, and more. Hopefully a more U.S.-friendly version will follow, as happened when Mot's Linux-based quad-band A780 came out a year or so after it's tri-band forebear, the A768, shipped in China."
Probably, but it may well be worthwhile paying off the loss in performance for greater ease and speed of development. They didn't have to write the kernel from scratch; though no doubt there have been some significant modifications.
the layman's guide to computer science
Nowhere in the article does it say that linux is the reason behind the batteries long standby time. You might want to read it again.
Rock is Dead! Long live Paper and Scissors!!
Again, TFA says:
Does anyone know why Motorola keeps doing this? Isn't there a viable market for linux-based mobile phone in Europe or the US for example?
Linux is not competing against a simple kernel that simply goes to sleep. It is competing against Win CE, Symbian, etc. that ARE real oses as well. They have their own share of issues that are apparently much slower and/or more overhead.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I would imagine something without as many features to consume less power. I'd say it's not power-saving features of Linux, but rather a better battery and/or more power-efficient electronics as a whole.
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Does it really matter what OS your phone is running? It's a closed system; you can't get at the internals.
Am I part of the core demographic for Swedish Fish?
The point is it only needs 1000mAh battery. Sure, if I have four batteries, I have standby time _four_ times as long as you.
Iff you checked the capacity of your battery and decided that your phone indeed must have lower consumption then the new phone then you have to check whether your phone runs an OS that's in the same category as Linux and _only then_ can you claim it's not impressive.
(I'm not saying you must be wrong. I'm just saying that you may be comparing apples to PCs, ooops, sorry apples to oranges)
My 2 year old siemens s55 gets 10days-2weeks standby with a 740mAh battery.
Like the greatparent said: the phone is absolutly NOTHING to write about (except LINUX LINUX LINUX LINUX... its slashdot, alright...)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
No, the point is exactly tha you get Linux there. If you got the same performance with Symbian or Windows then it would be equally impressive. s55 might be a nice phone and all, but you probably can't add any extra software (except Java stuff). Could you make s55 play Ogg files? Probably not. Can you get programs for Windows, Symbian, Linux phones, that play Oggs. Probably yes.
That's the whole point you get a more flexible OS, not so huge phone and a still a decent battery life.
Yes, I still get nearly a week of standby on my four years old Sony phone (640mAh battery). I don't get GPRS, Bluetooth, camera, colours, IMAP email client, etc. etc. that's the whole point. The new phone has a lot of nice features _and_ a decent standby time.
And why yes, on the top of all this, I'm interested to hear that it runs Linux. Linux on mobiles, on a single chipset, is "news for nerds, stuff that matters." If you don't like what Slashdot is reporting on, don't read the main section but just things that you find interesting. And if you reply to a post, please read the whole post you're replying to first, before complaining about Slashdot. Not RTFA, not reading the comments properly, posting offtopic is what makes Slashdot occasionally suck. Posting news about Linux does not.
While power management can be performed by an OS, the majority of power savings can come from efficient hardware design. Being a chip designer, I know that the power consumption of my device is not highly dependent on the OS I am running, but on how many fast switching transistors I put in the device.
Linux has nothing to do with the power consumption. Good hardware design along with good software (regardless of OS) to switch the device off when not in use is the key to long battery design.
Enough with the glorification of Linux (and OSes in general). Lets give a little attention to the good hardware design. Software people have the easy job. They can simply recompile when something doesn't work. I get my ass beat when we spend 50k on a chip that doesn't work right.