Smartphones are developing at a rapid rate, with next-generation superphones offering larger, brighter screens, more and more connectivity, and ever-faster CPUs – but one thing that has not been improving is battery life. Luckily, smartphone manufacturers are waking up to this fact so we should see improvements in this area over the next twelve months.
Motorola will soon be launching the DROID RAZRMAXX which is an updated version of its svelte DROID RAZR but with a bigger battery – 3300 mAh to be exact, a big improvement over the previous 1750 mAh battery in the original, and should address one of the main complaints about the otherwise very popular device.
Smartphone leader Samsung are also planning on addressing the battery problem, with Kevin Packingham, VP of product innovation at the company saying in an interview at CES 2012 that “when you wake up to when you go to bed, we don’t want you feeling anxiety about your battery life”. Bigger batteries are one way Samsung are tackling the issue, but others include how their phones search for WiFi or connect to 4G networks, as well as moving to Super AMOLED displays which offer improved brightness and colour for less battery drain.
The larger and higher pixel-density screens are a major power drain for modern smartphones, but each part of the device can offer efficiency improvements. For example, CPUs are getting faster and faster, but using a chip like the nVidia Tegra 3 (Kal El) would actually improve battery life alongside performance thanks to its 5th core – a slower and more efficient core (when compared to the other four which are blazing fast), which is dynamically picked as the one to use when the phone isn’t performing complex tasks – ie. 90+% of the time.
2011 saw the push for technology firms to offer the biggest screen in the thinnest package, but 2012 may see a few millimetres sacrificed for larger batteries that will keep a phone juiced for 24 hours.