Low battery life is the scourge of modern mobile devices. Each manufacturer is struggling with this ailment as best it can, but no one has yet proposed a universal solution for all occasions.
Foreword
Not so long ago, the vast majority of mobile devices were simple 'dialers'. These were telephones in the classic sense of the word – they were bought solely for the sake of being able to call and write SMS messages. The ability to be in touch all the time and not be tied to a landline phone to most people then seemed fantastic in itself, and no one thought about demanding something else from mobile phones.
Over time, mobile phones began to have additional functions – for example, the ability to take pictures, listen to music, check mail. Alas, it all came down to the power of iron – those were the days of tiny screens, weak processors, and very simple cameras. Very, very few were ready to use such a phone as a replacement for a camera or laptop, for most people this game was simply not worth the candle.
Now the situation is strictly the opposite. The quality of photos of smartphones has long been on par with standard 'soap boxes', the size and resolution of screens are growing literally by leaps and bounds, eight-core processors and gigabytes of RAM have become a common thing, and programs for Android and iOS so much that you won't try it in your entire life. What ten or fifteen years ago could only be found on the pages of science fiction novels is today a familiar and even slightly boring reality.
And all is good, but the battery life of mobile devices fell to an all-time low. This is the price that had to be paid for the unprecedented speed with which mobile technology is developing. People are used to the fact that every year something new and unusual comes out, that devices are becoming smarter and more useful, and last year's flagship is considered by default to be outdated. No one is ready to wait two or three years until all the components of the device are brought to mind, everyone wants to get a novelty here and now. Manufacturers benefit from this – rather than releasing a single 'smart' watch, as close as possible to the ideal, it is better to sell 5-6 generations of such devices during the same time, earning a dozen or two times more.
If engineers living twenty years ago could get into our days with the help of a magic time machine, they would definitely think that they were in the Looking Glass. Bright, beautiful, extremely interesting – but at the same time completely insane.
He sat down to finish writing an article, and the smartphones were discharged, he decided to take a picture of another device while they were charging, and the camera down also sat down?
– Evgeny Vildyaev (@ A1daron) April 26, 2015
A watch that needs to be charged daily is a madness that is perceived as the norm these days. Heaped up smartphones, which are scary to turn on the screen once again – mutants trying to impersonate mobile phones. It's not even worth talking about more complex devices like flying drones – most of the available models work according to the principle of Russian folk tales ('you first feed me, give me drink and put me to bed, and then I, so be it, fly for ten minutes for you'). And all this against the background of the incessant race of megahertz, ppi and 'parrots' in synthetic tests, because of which the appetites of mobile devices are growing more and more every year.
Woe from Wit
Over the past year, I have heard the same idea many times from a variety of people – all these abstruse devices are already pretty tired, I want something understandable, stable and simple that would just do their job well. And at the same time it did not require constant attention and care. As for the additional features, they usually only get in the way, adding a bunch of 'bugs' and reducing battery life.
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'Electronic fatigue' |
If we are to buy a watch, then the most common ones that do not need to be plugged into the outlet every day. And it's not scary that calling a friend on them or recording a video on them will not work – this is a clock, not a James Bond spy gadget. If you want to read from some kind of electronic device, then you should take a reader with an e-ink screen without any unnecessary functions and bells and whistles. Let’s not play games on it and not sit in “Vkontakte”, but during the whole vacation you can not think about charging at all, but just read calmly. And when buying a smartphone, battery life began to matter much more than having a 2K screen, a third gigabyte of RAM or the latest processor model. No matter how many points in the benchmarks such a smartphone scored, and with a discharged battery, in any case, it is useless a little more than completely.
Optimization after the fact
There are several ways to solve the problem with battery life. The first way is software optimization. Excess power corrupts, software developers gradually shift the emphasis towards the number of functions, rather than the quality of their implementation. If everything works like that, then what is the point of wasting time and effort on additional code optimization, which most of the users will never be able to appreciate? And the fact that such an application consumes a little more resources than it could, and the battery charge 'eats up' just before our eyes – well, there is no perfection in the world, nothing can be done.
Often, the device software is optimized after it has gone on sale. This applies to both battery life and other parameters. You don't have to go far for examples, just look at the flagship devices of this year. For example, on a smartphone HTC One M9, in which at the time of release the photo part was very limp. To the credit of the company, it should be noted that this problem was solved quite quickly and literally with one of the first updates, the quality of photos has improved a lot. It's just not clear what prevented you from doing all this work in advance?
If we talk specifically about battery life, then the Samsung Galaxy S6 would be an excellent example. As you know, the new flagship of the Korean company received a new processor, high-resolution screen and other 'goodies' … but its battery life turned out to be even shorter than that of the Galaxy S5.
But no sooner had users started to complain about the increased appetites for new hardware, when the company released an update that increased the battery life of the device. This is another example of a situation where the firmware of a device is 'finished' after the start of sales.
However, you need to understand that problems can be caused not only by the OS itself or the manufacturer's proprietary shell. A substantial part of the battery power is 'consumed' by applications running on a smartphone. And if you can still hope to optimize the firmware itself, then it is clearly not worth expecting that all existing programs will be optimized for a smartphone with not the most popular hardware. It is simply impossible to optimize each application for all existing hardware, and it often happens that the same application works completely differently on different smartphones. A program that works like a clock for one person, for another can constantly glitch, slow down and discharge a fully charged battery in a couple of hours. It can take a long time to argue who is to blame here, the programmer developing the application or the device manufacturer, but the user will still be the last one.
Mobile diet
The second way is the optimal choice of iron. It does not always make sense to use the latest processor model or the newest type of screen, especially if they are not doing well with power consumption. In the same watch, it is quite possible to use an e-ink screen, and in smartphones you can sacrifice a couple of millimeters of thickness for a more capacious battery. And Android, despite all its popularity, should not be used everywhere. In many cases, its capabilities are redundant, and simpler and energy-efficient solutions can be used for the same purposes.
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Thinking out loud. Why smartwatches are not needed Android |
But until the fashion for 'ultrafast' and 'ultrathin' has passed, very few manufacturers will be willing to take risks. It may sound funny, but monsters like Apple will never be able to afford what has long been the norm for startups like Pebble. If Apple Watch e-ink had a display, they would have been dubbed a failure even before the start of sales, and even the company's former reputation would not have saved the company. For buyers, such a decision would look like a clear step backward, once again proving that 'Apple is no longer cake'. Manufacturers can assume as much as they want that their marketers are turning their hapless buyers around. In fact, they are bound by the expectations of their users hand and foot, and people who are able not only to blindly follow fashion, but to change it to their liking, are very, very rare.
Write one, mind two
The third way – all kinds of energy-saving modes, which partly compensate for the excess power of iron. For example, you can put the coolest processor in your phone, but programmatically limit its clock frequency.
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Energy saving technologies Android |
There is one trick here – you need to do this almost imperceptibly for the user. When the phone has two modes, 'standard' and 'low power', 99% of users will prefer using the former over the latter. Even if they use the purchased flagship as a regular 'dialer'. The proposal to degrade the performance of an expensive flagship with his own hands is perceived as a real insult, although if it were at the same level initially, no one would even blink an eye.
In recent years, almost all manufacturers have come to something similar, but each of them achieves the goal in its own way. For example, smartphones Xiaomi originally had two power modes, 'optimal' and 'productive'. Moreover, it was the first option that was set by default, which most buyers did not even think about. And the wording, you must agree, is rather streamlined – we are talking about the optimal power mode, and not about the deterioration of the processor's characteristics. Thus, the problem with excess performance was solved, and users did not honor themselves deprived. Moreover, if necessary, the smartphone itself switched to the 'productive' mode, so there were no problems in heavy games and other similar applications.
The gentlemen from Samsung at one time acted even more cunning – the company's smartphones went into maximum performance mode only during synthetic tests. Thus, with the 'parrots' everything was just fine there, but in real life it was impossible to get such performance. The situation is not very beautiful, in fact, this is a blatant cheating of results. At one time, there was a major scandal about this, a number of benchmarks even refused to take into account the results of some smartphone models.
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Friday News Digest # 14 |
On the other hand, in the same Samsung, a lot of time is devoted to all sorts of energy-saving modes that work more clearly … or, if you like, more honestly. With the battery life of the flagships of the Korean company, everything is very, very good, especially if you look towards the Note series. And this is the merit not only and not so much of batteries as software. For this, many people were ready to put up with anything – not the most successful design, and jams in TouchWiz.
Iron economy
The fourth way is various energy-saving modes of operation at the level of the hardware itself. Processors built on the big.LITTLE architecture can be cited as an example. They use several pairs of nuclei of different types. For simple tasks that do not require high performance, a pair of 'weak' cores with excellent energy efficiency are used. As soon as their power begins to be insufficient, a 'powerful' pair of nuclei comes into play, which consumes much more energy.
Another example of such a path is Amoled screens, which consume almost no energy when displaying black. A well-chosen color scheme of the interface can give a tangible plus. And special 'monochrome' modes of operation, like the ones in the flagships of Samsung, do wonders.
Fast, fun, convenient …
The fifth way is to reduce the time and simplify the charging process. If the smartphone charges in a matter of minutes, and is not yet 'tied' to a power outlet with a cable, then battery life will become less important. Work in this direction is also very active, wireless charging has not seemed unusual for a long time, and fast charging modes, in which half of the battery is charged in a dozen or two minutes, will also surprise no one for a long time.
By itself, such a quick charge does not cancel the fuss with cables and sockets, but it turned out to be quite easy to help this grief. Wireless charging technologies are becoming more and more popular every year. And not only from electronics manufacturers, but also from furniture designers, lighting fixtures, interior decorations and other familiar items.
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Ikea and wireless chargers |
Perhaps if such technologies were really widespread, it would make the problem with battery life less acute. The smartphone could be charged automatically while traveling in public transport, shops, cafes and many other places. But, firstly, it will obviously not happen very soon. And secondly, in any case, this cannot be called a complete solution to the problem. It is worth a little distance from the benefits of civilization, and the smartphone will again be discharged by the middle of the day.
Someone suggests embedding flexible batteries with wireless charging directly into clothes – but this is also more a gesture of despair than a solution to a problem. Instead of getting rid of the plug to the outlet, we simply choose a more comfortable leash type for ourselves. There are some crazy ideas too – for example, jackets with built-in solar panels or T-shirts that charge the smartphone battery with loud sound. And although projects like this sometimes get awards at design exhibitions or collect substantial sums on sites like Kickstarter, they cannot be called serious.
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Offtopic: 'Smart' clothes |
Soaring in the clouds
The same can be said about another method, which is directly related to working in the cloud. Why buy yourself a super-powerful smartphone or laptop when all the necessary calculations can be done on remote servers, and the device itself can be used as a terminal? In turn, a relatively weak iron will solve a lot of different problems, from battery life and overheating to the cost and the final price of the device.
There are similar projects, even if they are not yet very popular. For example, something similar should be a Chromebook , where all the main applications run on Google servers, and not on the laptop itself. Or portable devices such as nVidia shield, which allow you to broadcast complex 3D games running on a PC to the screens of mobile devices. With them, all questions about whether a low-power mobile device can handle such a “heavy” game can be left in the past.
Moreover, it is often not even necessary to buy a special device for these purposes, it is enough just to use a suitable cloud service. After all, this is the main charm of cloud computing – almost any device can act as a client, at least slightly more complicated than a calculator.
In my opinion, this is a very beautiful and interesting idea. But at the moment it is not very viable. The reason is the same as with ubiquitous wireless charging – the lack of the necessary infrastructure. Step out of range and your device is completely useless. Nobody will play the same games with constant lags, delays and desynchronization. As a result, it turns out that such devices can be used mainly in those places where there is Wi-Fi. That is, first of all at home, where there is already a laptop, set-top box or PC at hand. To fully use such cloud services on the road or out of town is usually out of the question.
An example of such a service is Onlive. It allowed playing modern games even on the weakest hardware, processing all the data on a remote server, and then broadcasting the final image to the computer. And a little later, the service also acquired support for tablets. By the end of 2012, Onlive had a user base of just under 2 million people and had a library of around 250 different games. But after this service was acquired by Sony, its days were virtually numbered – for the Japanese company Onlive was primarily a dangerous competitor to PlayStation Now. Onlive was officially closed at the beginning of this month, the last day of the service is April 20.
Link to news
The obvious is the incredible
Finally, the most obvious, but perhaps the most difficult path is the development of a new type of battery. This is the dream of most mobile device manufacturers, which they are trying with all their might to bring to life. Thousands of specialists from all over the world are fighting over this task, but there is no practical result yet. Although news about the coming revolution appears on specialized sites with enviable constancy.
An example is one of Google X's projects – a flexible solid-state battery. Unlike conventional batteries, it will use solid chemicals instead of liquid chemicals, which will significantly reduce the size of the battery.
Work on the project began back in 2013, led by Dr. Ramesh Bhardway, who was previously a battery expert Apple.
Link to news
Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to predict the opening times. There is no doubt that a breakthrough in this area will happen sooner or later, but when exactly this will happen is anyone's guess. Perhaps a prototype of an incredible battery of the future exists in some secret laboratory right now. And perhaps we will dream of such batteries for another forty years.
