I was just looking through a review of the skylake macbook and it mentioned an extra hour of battery life due to a more efficient processor.
I guess while technically correct, something about that statement bugs me. Phones, laptops etc are all similar. Processors get faster and you get better battery life. Except you don't.
I googled the expected battery life of my mbp - 9 hours of video/10 hours of web. My SP3 is supposed to get 9 hours web. At work today I got about 3-4 hours on the macbook. Similar (if slightly less for the surface). I am not doing anything I think of as particularly strenuous that is taxing CPU/GPU.
My phone does approx 2-3 hours of screen on time. My first smart phone was similar I guess.
All the advances in efficiency seem to come from the race to idle. Burst and power down. Burst and power down.
If you're constantly using your device (say a skype call, which can flatten the surface in a couple of hours) though it seems power efficiency and battery life hasn't shifted much in the last 5-6 years (at least since the core 2's - from memory I believe they were the last intel chips that didn't use couldn't burst and throttle on demand).
Assuming we don't get a huge leap in battery tech tomorrow and that the race to idle can only go so far, I was wondering where we will find the next efficiency gains or battery life.
I guess while technically correct, something about that statement bugs me. Phones, laptops etc are all similar. Processors get faster and you get better battery life. Except you don't.
I googled the expected battery life of my mbp - 9 hours of video/10 hours of web. My SP3 is supposed to get 9 hours web. At work today I got about 3-4 hours on the macbook. Similar (if slightly less for the surface). I am not doing anything I think of as particularly strenuous that is taxing CPU/GPU.
My phone does approx 2-3 hours of screen on time. My first smart phone was similar I guess.
All the advances in efficiency seem to come from the race to idle. Burst and power down. Burst and power down.
If you're constantly using your device (say a skype call, which can flatten the surface in a couple of hours) though it seems power efficiency and battery life hasn't shifted much in the last 5-6 years (at least since the core 2's - from memory I believe they were the last intel chips that didn't use couldn't burst and throttle on demand).
Assuming we don't get a huge leap in battery tech tomorrow and that the race to idle can only go so far, I was wondering where we will find the next efficiency gains or battery life.
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