Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Windows 10 Adds Battery Saver Feature

Posted by timothy on from the perpetual-frontier dept.

jones_supa writes In past builds of Windows 10 Technical Preview there has been an interesting feature called Battery Saver, but for the time being it has been just a mockup. In a leaked build 9888, the code is now in place. Battery Saver, as the name implies, will help your mobile device make the most out of your battery. This feature works by limiting the background activity on your device when the mode is activated. You can turn the feature on any time but there is also a setting to have it automatically turn on when the battery capacity goes below a user-defined percentage. Considering that this build was not supposed to make its way out of Redmond and that the company is not releasing any new builds this year, this may be the best look we get until the Consumer Preview arrives.

10 of 96 comments (clear)

  1. triggering below percentage is dumb by savuporo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    so, I have had this annoyance with android forever.
    there are multiple battery saver things that trigger saving features when I'm below percentage - but its obviously too late then!!

    the trigger needs to activate when the RATE OF DRAIN exceeds a particular threshold

    --
    http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
    1. Re:triggering below percentage is dumb by TFlan91 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      ^ This.

      So this. 100x this.

      The logic behind all these battery savers is ridiculous.

      "Your battery is now at 20%" - Let me warning you every 5 minutes that it's low, consuming even MORE battery. Once is enough, thanks.
      "Your battery is now at 10%" - Let me tell all applications about this so they can all send their data to the "cloud" all at once, draining it EVEN FURTHER!
      "Your battery is now at ... " - Phone turned off due to too many bells and whistles about your battery being low!

    2. Re:triggering below percentage is dumb by Rei · · Score: 2

      One that annoys the heck out of me, if you have an unreliable charging source (poor cable or charging port, solar-powered charger, etc): the screen comes on, both when power starts, and when power disconnects. Combined with an unreliable charging source, your screen is constantly coming on, wasting what power you do get, and there's no way to disable it without root. (The best non-root option I've found is an app that shuts the screen off immediately after it turns out due to a power state change, but that's obviously not ideal).

      --
      You look beautiful! Incidentally, my favorite artist is Picasso.
    3. Re:triggering below percentage is dumb by mlts · · Score: 3, Informative

      The only "real" battery saver utility I've seen on any device which actually was useful is the Extreme Battery Saver mode on the HTC One M8. This drops all network connections, changes the launcher to a simple one, stops all background apps, and allows for the phone, texting, and clock/alarm. This has come very much in handy, allowing for a phone to run multiple days on a single battery charge.

  2. Re:Stable enough? by jones_supa · · Score: 4, Informative

    I would say yes. There aren't really any stability problems but things keep somewhat shuffling around as new builds are released. It should give you a nice free gaming OS until it expires in spring. :)

  3. seriously? by Goldsmith · · Score: 2

    I know windows phone doesn't have a large market share, but no one involved with this looked to see if this is a new feature? I've had this on my phone for a long time, it's not special at this point. It's on by default under 20% charge. It is a real thing and definitely slows down battery drain; definitely better than trying to manually adjust settings to get that extra hour of battery life.

  4. Re:so.... by Penguinisto · · Score: 2, Insightful

    No - it's Microsoft's incarnation of Apple's AppNap feature.
    (think of it as an aggressive and automatic version of the *nix renice function with a suspend feature latched onto it.)

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  5. Re:so.... by dagamer34 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, it's not. AppNap enables the OS to wake up and have apps refresh their state (enabling more functionality). Battery Saver on the other hand clamps down on apps which periodically refresh when battery is low because a dead battery is useless to the consumer.

  6. Re:so.... by LordThyGod · · Score: 2

    No - it's Microsoft's incarnation of Apple's AppNap feature. (think of it as an aggressive and automatic version of the *nix renice function with a suspend feature latched onto it.)

    Sounds a lot like the Android platform things that's been around for awhile. You configure battery life left, and a bunch of stuff that you can limit if its below that point.

  7. Re:so.... by morgauxo · · Score: 2

    Yah, would that be the "if your battery is at less than 99% everything is going to go slow and suck" feature?