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Growing Power Gap Could Force Smartphone Tradeoffs
alphadogg writes "Mobile users face a fast-growing gap between their smartphones' increasing power needs and battery capacity. That gap could force users to make tradeoffs in how, and for what, they use their phones, even as vendors at all levels work even harder to reduce power demand in mobile devices, according to Chris Schreck, a research analyst with IMS Research. Schreck estimates that a 1500 mAh battery, the industry's current 'high water mark,' yields for many smartphone users a battery life of about 6 hours — highly dependent on what applications and on-device technologies, including Wi-Fi, users are running. The latest and greatest tech advances, including faster CPUs, higher data throughput, and improved displays all crank up the demand for power. The combination of user behavior and technology is boosting power demand faster than battery capacity can keep up. Schreck estimates power requirements can grow 15% a year."
The android challenge should add a green-attribute somehow. Perhaps a special award to that category. Its not sexy to make the battery last longer. It takes a lot of effort and without reward, it won't happen. That is because the app appears outside the phone framework. e.g. somehow not responsible for power loss, when it is.
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Considering that a mobile phone is always in your pocket and being moved around, isn't there a way to tap the kinetic energy to send small recharges to the battery throughout the day. This won't be enough to never have to charge, but may delay the time between charges enough to make it worthwhile...
Like Rolex watches or something.
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
... Schreck, a research analyst with IMS Research.
As a work around, I think he plans on just having Donkey carry around more batteries.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
This already happened. Years ago. I rarely turn on the wifi on my phone, even if I'm in range and even if I'm surfing the internet, and am sure that GPS is turned off unless I'm actually using it.
It'd be great to know how much of the battery life is consumed by the processors. If it's a major factor (versus, say, screen life, where LEDs and quantum well diodes should theoretically help), then perhaps the reversible computing push so prevalent in Kurzweil's books and rhetoric could be of some assistance.
Wish they'd do one battery for the radio components and one for the CPU/etc. That way your CPU (MP3, gaming, PDA) requirements wouldn't be a slave to your talk time on the phone - and vice-versa.
Ever have to get some data off your mobile but couldn't turn it on because you've been talking all day and run it down?
Let's get the kneejerk comments out of the way:
- "Doesn't anyone use their phone as a god damn PHONE anymore? I'm running ($massively_antiquated_cellphone) and other than the hernia from carrying it around it stays charged for 3 months!"
- "6 hours on a charge? My anecdote beats that anecdote!"
- "Cell phone designers should stop being lazy and make their phones run on the tears of albino unicorns, then we wouldn't have to read about their problems with power consumption."
- "Technology will advance to take care of this problem. In fact, when the Singularity happens, we won't even need cell phones anymore."
Wow, the un-newsworthiness of this article completely escaped me until you provide a car analogy. It's all so clear now! Obviously, when dealing with a technology that sometimes features geometrically increasing capabilities, we should always remember to think in terms of internal-combustion transportation devices! DUH!
Back on topic, I think it'll be interesting to see how interfaces make selective shutoff of features more intuitive inside a program, instead of having to bump out & modify device settings. To that end, it might be useful to have programming constructs for developers to indicate that such-and-such function will need network access, or what have you, as a hint to a mobile OS that could do runtime analysis & shut down pieces as necessary.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Nothing will drive battery research like a heavy demand for better batteries.
Until that time, carry a spare battery. I've always done this, just in case I drain the first one. This is one of the biggest reasons I refuse to buy an iPhone -- you can't remove the battery.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
The problem is the apps. Running an application means you are using the CPU, memory and/or networking functionality more often. On a smartphone that is used only intermittently for e-mail, the cost is small. If you are running a realtime GPS directions app for an hour at a time, you're using a hell of a lot more. Then add games, fully JavaScript-compatible web browsers, etc. It adds up. Even a normal cell phone runs down the battery an order of magnitude faster while talking than while it's sitting in your pocket. Running apps is more demanding, and consequently the power drains ever faster.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
no biggie, desk charger... check, car charger.. check, nightstand charger.. check. I don't spend more than 10 minutes between any one of those things... so give me all the features baby, i only need 10 minutes between plug in times. (obligatory thats what she said!)
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
Smartphones are also getting caught up in the same software/hardware race that computers are in.
Opening Google Maps is painfully slow on an Edge iPhone. On a 3GS it is much faster....but sooner or later Google Maps will add features that will bog it down. So another hardware upgrade will be in order and the cycle will repeat.
Microsoft is probably itching to slap Aero glass into Winmo, if only someone would increase battery capacity by a few thousandfold.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
As always, it comes down to consumer choice. Do you want an MC-900-Foot-Jesus-Phone with a library of twelve thousand different fart noises at your fingertips which goes from fully charged to flat in six hours, or would you rather tote around a nigh-indestructible Motofone F3 with a battery which lasts over a week on a single charge, but has no features beyond voice and SMS?
I would advise you to vote with your wallet and let the market decide, but you'd have to buy a new F3 every day for over three weeks just to add up to the cost of The Other Phone so it seems that some votes count more than others.
People always focus on charge capacity and energy usage, but charging speed is just as important. If they can make batteries that charge in a few minutes (or hell, 30 seconds) I wouldn't mind at all if the battery only lasts 6 hours under heavy use. Put some research into that.
A trend I've noticed for both smartphones and laptops is the constant drive to reduce size and make devices thinner. Smaller and thinner is trendier. Frankly, I wish they're just make an iPhone or laptop twice as thick, thus quadrupling the battery life. I'm not a weakling. I can carry a bit more weight especially if the device is functional enough to take over the function of some other devices I would otherwise carry.
You can get one of these, or a try a more do-it-yourself option
Well, if we are proposing new power technologies, how about something *slightly* more practical, like small scale fuel cells? Or, if you want to go really pie-in-the-sky, how about small scale atomic batteries or radioisotope thermoelectric generators. Change your batteries every 15-20 years.
It seems it will be a while before there will be significant progress in batteries. As a stop-gap measure is it realistic to deploy network of chargers? Chargers at cafe, shops, gov offices, ATM and phone booths. Preferably inductive chargers to evade connectors hell. Cellular network operators can brand them, to give them incentive. Payment can go into phone bill.
My G-1 had horrible battery life.
Until I realized that it was more netbook than it was cell phone.
Now I have my expectations set correctly, and I'm not so disappointed with the battery life. Oh, it could be better, maybe, and I would like more than about 9 hours typical life before it goes into the low battery profile, but I now know it is just not a cell phone.
It's more.
And that takes more power.
And we don't have batteries that do that.
Can we squeeze some methane fuel cells into the available form factor? I wish...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Way back in the time of analogue mobile phones I had a nokia whose battery pack was six AA sized Ni-Cad cells. All the phones I have had over the last 6 years have had batteries the size of a wafer-thin mint and, by staggering coincidence, short operating times.
Making the phone twice as thick would give you approx 1000% more room for the battery.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
I was shocked the other day when I noticed that running my 3gs with 'everything' on and TomTom, the car charger was keeping the battery at 58%. Not 'charging' it.
What I'd love is a simple app (in the app store, dammit) which lets you define profiles. When I'm driving, I don't need wi-fi on, I probably don't need 3G on. When I'm at the office, I don't need location services on, I don't need 3G on, but I do need wi-fi on. And so on.
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You're missing the point, which is that apparently smartphones are doing really well in the market now, and people want more and more functionality and power, but the makers are running up against power limits with the batteries they're using.
To use your car analogy, it's sorta like customers demanding ever-larger engines in their ever-larger cars, but not wanting bigger fuel tanks or higher gas bills. Right now, people aren't clamoring for V12 and V16 engines making 1000+ bhp, so there's no news there, but there would be if people were buying V16 (or W16) engines left and right, especially if they were then complaining about the bad fuel economy.
Perhaps using multiple cores can do the trick. Say that we have the following cores:
1. Basic-core This handles the basic operations on the phone and is run at all time
2. Basic User interface core. When the user starts interacting with the phone this one kicks in and handles the basic operations
3. Advanced User interface This one starts as soon as more CPU intensive tasks are being engaged such as browsing through pictures, writing SMS/MMS (using dictionary lookups) etc
4. Multimedia core This core is activated when playing audio and/or video
Only the first of the 4 cores is active all the time and depending on user operation the others are activated/deactivated accordingly so as to consume minimal wattage. Perhaps the settings can provide the user with the options of forcing core 3 to be disabled to save power and/or forcing it to be enabled (when core 2 is enabled) so as to ensure GUI speed. If the battery runs out the phone can automatically enforce some of the cores to stay disabled until the battery is put on recharge...
This is just an idea but maybe it works...