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Breakthrough Promises Smartphones that Use Half the Power

Dupple writes in with news about a discovery that should extend the life of your battery in the near future. "Powering cellular base stations around the world will cost $36 billion this year—chewing through nearly 1 percent of all global electricity production. Much of this is wasted by a grossly inefficient piece of hardware: the power amplifier, a gadget that turns electricity into radio signals. The versions of amplifiers within smartphones suffer similar problems. If you've noticed your phone getting warm and rapidly draining the battery when streaming video or sending large files, blame the power amplifiers. As with the versions in base stations, these chips waste more than 65 percent of their energy—and that's why you sometimes need to charge your phone twice a day. It's currently a lab-bench technology, but if it proves itself in commercialization, which is expected to start in 2013—first targeting LTE base stations—the technology could slash base station energy use by half. Likewise, a chip-scale version of the technology, still in development, could double the battery life of smartphones."

4 of 110 comments (clear)

  1. Please keep me warm... by zippo01 · · Score: 4, Funny

    But what will keep me warm on those long lonely nights while I watching inappropriate things on my phone?

    1. Re:Please keep me warm... by ozmanjusri · · Score: 4, Funny

      Friction.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  2. Re:Android battery stats by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 5, Funny

    You must be new on planet news: could save up to 50% means "will probably save less than 5%, but we need a grant".

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    Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  3. Smartphones that Use Half the power by TheInternetGuy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Breakthrough Promises Smartphones that Use Half the Power

    Seems inefficient, wouldn't it be better if they used all the power?

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    If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame