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Microsoft Teases Multi-Day Battery Life For Upcoming ARM-Powered Windows Devices (techspot.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechSpot: Microsoft late last year announced a partnership with Qualcomm to bring the full Windows 10 experience to ARM-powered devices. Terry Myerson, Executive Vice President of Microsoft's Windows and Devices Group, promised at the time that Snapdragon-powered Windows 10 devices would be efficient in the power consumption department. We're still waiting for the partnership to bear fruit but in the interim, new details regarding efficiency (and a few other subjects) have emerged. With regard to battery life, Pete Bernard, Principal Group Program Manager for Connectivity Partners at Microsoft, said that to be frank, battery life at this point is beyond their expectations: ""We set a high bar for [our developers], and we're now beyond that. It's the kind of battery life where I use it on a daily basis. I don't take my charger with me. I may charge it every couple of days or so. It's that kind of battery life."
...it must be a dildo.
Can't wait for the first complaints: "Oh, no! Not rebooting _now_ for an update!"
Charge it every few days because it has so few applications that you never use it?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
If my Surface RT is any indication of Windows and ARM, after a year and tons of patches it will last maybe 4 hours of normal usage.
Even my shitty Lenovo Android tablet gets by on a charge once per week or so.
As long as it's turned off, a battery with a full charge will last for at least a couple of days.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I was wondering why this would be different from the Surface RT, and after reading TFA I still don't know.
Also, who are they going to sell these to? The people who bought Surface RT won't want to be fooled again (presumably) and everyone else already has an iPad or some sort of Android tablet, or maybe a Microsoft Surface device which runs x86 and so has access to whatever Windows software the user might need.
This looks like all the other Microsoft "new market" type efforts. Doomed to failure and then irrelevance, then death.
Multi-DAY? That doesn't sound impressive at all. Is Windows 10 so power-hungry on ARM that it's praiseworthy for them to break 2 days before needing a recharge?
I'd give an ARM and leg for something like that!
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Pardon me for asking but, how many AMP-HOURS will the device provide and how many AMP-HOURS will the device consume when run at full spec?
They didn't specify the specs of the device that runs multiple days on a charge, so the statement is utterly meaningless. I have numerous computing devices that can go days -- even weeks between charges. But none of them are phones, tablets, or laptops.
Run Windows 95 for days on end! 49.7 days to be exact!
Give it up already. It aint gonna happen. Windows NT has been ported to many platforms and they already tried in modern computing history with WindowsPhone and WindowsRT.
Unless maybe they plan some sort of weird hybrid device where the OS runs on the ARM but an ATOM (discontinued) or some x86 takes over to run classic apps I see more money lost.
Even Google played with x86 hardware with Android for x86 with the Asus Zenfone. It failed. Applications/Programs define what hardware/software to run. ARM is stuck on mobile, x86 for content creators and IBM stuff for mainframes.That is just the way it is.
http://saveie6.com/
It runs win 32 apps, RT didn't.
They will sell them to the 90% of people who do light to moderate tasks and want a 2 day battery.
"Science is the power of man"
For many of you that have posted, WoA will run win 32 apps, this isn't RT.
So many "nerds" here ignorant of that fact.
"Science is the power of man"
I highly doubt it will get days of battery life in any realistic scenario.
There is no magical way to make common tasks 2-3x more efficient. There are no magic RAM chips that draw 25% normal power, no special GPUs that decode video using half as much energy as every other one. Did someone invent a super efficient LED backlight?
And people expect their Windows devices to stay connected to networks and more active than a phone, so that Skype calls can come in etc. Android and iOS sleep for to to 15 minutes, with no IP connectivity and delayed notifications, to save power.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You do realize that win32 apps are little-endian and ARM is big-endian.
Even with a highly optimized emulator, the overhead of constantly byte swapping data will be huge and eat-up any advantage of running on an ARM processor.
Do not want.
well if they drop the store only part and let people compile for ARM and x86
ARM can run in both big- and little-endian mode. Under Linux, I've only seen little endian on ARM. I have run both Linux and Windows IoT on my RPi, so Windows has had a level of ARM support for a while:
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/iot
The Win32 API seems to be the thing that's been missing. I am wondering if the "desktop" will need ARM binaries or if there will be some kind of translation from x86.
Being a "nerd" does not grant omniscience of random facts (and alt-facts, and whatnot else).
Me, I can't help thinking, it only took them twenty odd years to get somewhat close to decent battery life. When I know for a fact that we had very decent low-power processors ages back, that nobody deigned put into laptops. In big part because of redmond's inflexibility and dominant position. Now that they're fighting to stay relevant at all, they're finally putting some pressure on their own developers. Thanks, redmond.
Four hours is still pretty good. My new MacBook is rated at 10 hours of battery life, and when doing Java development and running a couple of Windows vms, it only lasts a little over two hours. That works better than my Dell Latitude that lasts about forty minutes when doing the same.
That's funny. I was just thinking of asking a trick interview question the other day: "Is ARM big or little endian?" You failed it BTW.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
You could just put a realistically sized battery in there. Power draw minimization is one thing, power capacity is another.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I find it bizarre and a bit infuriating when a charge that lasts multiple days is considered a significant advance. We used to have phones that would go a week without a charge, longer if you didn't make a lot of calls, but these days you're expected to charge the device constantly even if you don't use it. A multi day charge should be considered the bare minimum of acceptability.
I've never seen an ARM set up to run big-endian, even though it is capable. I far prefer big-endian, but apparently the little-endian heresy is now the dominant religion.
I think even video encoding would require less processing power than Java or VMS. It's normal that you don't get the 10 hours that Apple gets in normal usage benchmarks.
#DeleteFacebook
They will sell them to the 90% of people who do light to moderate tasks and want a 2 day battery.
No they won't, those people already own an iPad or an Android device, or they remember the last time Microsoft tried this and then abandoned their devices.
Low power draw memory does exist and there are newer more efficient products every year.
Low power draw GPUs that still decode HD video do exist (and over the last few generations there are gains better than 50% less power). Same with CPUs.
LEDs are already super efficient. That's one reason why everyone switched to them.
The reality is, all these gains in efficiency add up. Pair that with a larger battery and advanced power management and it is feasible to achieve multi-day usage.
Maybe because you're dumbphone was not used at all when not calling. Battery was falling down quickly in call if I recall (at least as fast as modern smartphones) Of course, when your phone just sits around, sending some beacon from time to time, it doesn't use any energy... When on low usage mode, my smartphone lasts up to 4 days, and would probably go much longer if I used it only for calls and text on 2G network. Had a 5 day trip on two charges once (and I had gone over most of the 1st charge when i realized I forgot my charger...) So i guess, it's only due to the increased usage...
I have a 7" phablet. It has a 5AH battery, it lasts about 36 Hrs with normal use and about 18Hrs with heavy use and it was nowhere near as expensive as similar power phones because no one wants one. I personally cant understand it, I'm of average size (5ft 10) and I find its far better than the average phone in almost every single way.
This should take us back to the days of needing to stop typing every once in a while to let the screen catch up.
I disagree. I've used both Windows Phone and Android, I can say without doubt I got more mileage on the battery of my old Samsung Focus Windows Phone than I did my present Samsung Galaxy A3 Android. On Windows Phone I always had +40% battery at the end of a day on a single charge, whereas my Android phone gets charged twice a day. So if they've made big improvements since v7, on the right device, it could easily be true.
I think the biggest irony for Microsoft is that Windows Phone is both the finest OS they've ever produced and also their biggest failure.
The failure of Windows Phone I think has to be laid firmly at the feet of Balmer and his decision to buy Nokia. I never liked Nokia's devices.... neither did anyone else.
If Windows Phone hadn't spurned phone makers like Samsung by buying Nokia, it might have been a very different story for Windows Phone.
"There is no magical way to make common tasks 2-3x more efficient."
Well running native applications instead of java is a good start.
" I never liked Nokia's devices.... neither did anyone else."
Wow, could you possibly be more wrong about a topic?
'I don't take my charger with me. I may charge it every couple of days or so. It's that kind of battery life.'. Like I have been doing with my Macbook Air for years!
Apple have an advantage here because they make both the software and the hardware and can tune both to improve performance.
E.g. in one of Louis Rossman's videos he found out that the trackpad in a Macbook supports both SPI and USB. It runs in USB mode when you run Windows via Bootcamp or are in the EFI shell but SPI when you run macOS.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
SPI is obviously a lower power bus, but of course it's easier to add support for HID over SPI to an OS you control than it to one you don't.
So Apple have a special mode to save power by running the trackpad in SPI mode rather than USB.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
My current phone gets 2+ days of charge, while checking email in the background, playing music during the day, and being used for regular messaging and web browsing. The magic lies in it not being optimized for thin! over having decent battery life.
Ironically, it's also a Windows Phone, which was a surprising decent OS, despite having poor app availability and being abandoned by Microsoft. I've never been a fan of MS stuff, but wanted to try it out after having iPhones and Android phones. I'm definitely going to miss not being tethered to a charger when I go back to whichever of those I end up with next.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I've been running Windows on my Lumia 950XL for a couple of years now. Windows handles the Snapdragon 820 in it just fine.
This story makes clear the reason why they're "abandoning" Windows Mobile. They don't need it anymore. Windows-not-mobile works just fine on ARM, so why maintain a different SKU just for that? It's the endgame of the "One Windows" strategy. I think they might just be trying to signal that they've finally pulled it off. If so, more power to them.
that's probably because that crapple is constantly throttling since crapple wants thin over a good thermal design... my crapple notebooks throttle as soon as they're asked to do anything useful for more than a few minutes... my old school design sagers otoh only the 13" occasionally throttles...
Can you tell us what modem, or what size the battery is? On a Pixel XL with 3450mAh battery and Android I get two solid days with similar use to you, maybe a bit more browsing.
The secret to this is Doze, where the phone can sleep for up to 15 minutes at a time. The only problem is that any messages which arrive during that time are not received, things like wifi and cellular data connections are powered off. Calls still get through. It's okay for messaging apps and email, but for example if someone calls you on Skype you just get a notification of a missed call 10 minutes later - it doesn't ring at all.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
It's a Lumia 640 with a 2500 mAh battery. I don't use Skype, but calls and SMS/MMS come through immediately. I have sound notifications turned off for everything but calls and texts, so I'm sure the email is just being polled at intervals. I'm not a fan of enormous phones, either, so I'm sure the measly 5" screen cuts the power use down.
I only even considered this phone because my wife had a Lumia 635 and would regularly get a week off of a charge. She would lose her charger fairly often because she so rarely used it. Of course, she was only using the phone for calls and texting.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Yeah, calls and SMS/MMS will come through immediately. It's the data connection that really hogs the battery, so anything that needs data to notify like Skype or WhatsApp etc. will be delayed due to sleep.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The screen seems to hog the battery more than just the data connection. Unless my phone is particularly good at tearing down the connection and rebuilding it.
(Anecdote follows: For example, the last time I charged my phone was the night before last and I listened to Pandora all day at work yesterday, but never did much texting/email/screen-on activity. My phone sat in my pants pocket last night and when I checked it this morning, it was at 70%. I don't use my work's wifi for my personal phone, so all of the data used was through the cellular network.
A day of traveling and using only my phone for work email, web browsing, etc, will use the charge much more quickly.)
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
I think the critical failure for the Windows Phone was the app store. If they'd have baked some way to run Android apps on it that would have dramatically changed the mobile world.
Unfortunately the company culture wasn't right to do that then, and now the opportunity has passed. Today's Mcrosoft would do it in a heartbeat.
I used to manage a Big-Endian Gentoo distribution for the Linksys NSLU.
I built binary packages for it on bigger hardware since 32MB wasn't enough. Though the 128MB FatSlug did decently. As decently as a 166mhz ARM 5 could.
-J
Today's Microsoft killed the Astoria Android compatibility project: https://arstechnica.com/inform...
I think a great many products just stick with the default unless someone has a preference. The default suppplied with an eval board, the default that a chip has if you haven't touched the boot time pullups, the default that your board bring up contractors decided to use, etc. And that default is based upon people being used to Intel.
I also think that the Intel and Windows dominance has trained a generation of programmers that portability isn't important, and thus there's rarely any thought paid to byte order, such as protocols or file formats that can deal with both.
Removal of the ribbon and metro UI will improve productivity at least by 2-3x.
Leaving aside the battery issue, Win32 is an API that was designed for x86. It's used by programs that run on x86. It's run on computers that use...ARM?
The main advantage of running Windows is that you can run the same crap as your friends. Lots of this Windows crap is native code in x86, and an ARM is not going to do an energy-efficient job of emulating one. This is probably the biggest reason why RT crashed and burned so hard: it was advertised as Windows, but it didn't run Windows software.
And then users find that they can't run the same crap as their friends with Android and iOS devices, and the whole project crashes and burns like RT.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If they meant Nokia's Windows Phone devices, they have a fair point.
I think the biggest irony for Microsoft is that Windows Phone is both the finest OS they've ever produced
Depends on how you define "finest", but for me that would be user experience (aka UX.) I think Windows 7 was therefore the finest OS they produced. Ranked as follows: 7 > 10 > Vista > XP > 8 > Phone > Mobile. (Yes, Vista had some technical issues when it first launched, but I'm only going based on the latest version, which had most of that ironed out. Windows 7, which seems to be the most popular, is basically Vista SP3.)
If you define it as features, then it would go 10 > 8 > 7 > Vista > XP > Phone > Mobile
and also their biggest failure.
Failure should be defined as the least number of people who adopted the OS, and not least profit. That would definitely be Windows 8, but phone is not far behind it. Note that I am not including pre-Windows 2000 versions of Windows in all of the above, as 2000 was when Microsoft first got their act together.
If Windows Phone hadn't spurned phone makers like Samsung by buying Nokia, it might have been a very different story for Windows Phone.
No, that's not what alienated phone makers, nor was alienating phone makers why the OS failed. That was one of many things they did wrong. I explain this in detail here:
https://slashdot.org/comments....
As for Nokia...Microsoft had no choice but to buy Nokia -- they actually didn't want to buy it, even Ballmer didn't want to buy it, but Nokia deliberately forced Microsoft's hand to buy out their handset division for way more than it was worth. There's a guy who's job it is to understand the smartphone industry inside and out, and he explains it in detail. I'll link it when I find it later.
My Nokia Lumia 820 with Win8 Phone OS lasted at least 5 days with moderate use. People may knock the operating system, but it ran flawlessly and performed extremely well.
"ARM is not going to do an energy-efficient job of emulating one."
How do you know?
"Science is the power of man"