battery life
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iPad Air destroys the competition in battery life tests
Which? Tech Daily recently carried out a series of tests to determine which tablet is the one to beat when it comes to battery life. The results? The iPad Air absolutely crushed the competition. What's more, the test results show that the iPad Air performed even better than advertised, delivering nearly 13 hours of battery life during video playback. Even the iPad 2, released all the way back in 2011 performed better than most of the competition. The report adds: The iPad Air, iPad mini with Retina display and iPad 2 all performed better than the Android alternatives for web browsing. On a full tank, Apple's iPad Air will last for 658 minutes of web-browsing – beating the 483 minutes offered by the longest-lasting Android tablet we tested, Samsung's Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014 edition)... Of course, no one uses their tablet just to check the football scores. With TV streaming services like BBC iPlayer and Netflix proving phenomenally popular, how much video a device can play in one charge is hugely important. The iPad Air proved victorious in this test as well, offering 777 minutes of battery life – that's enough to watch the entire extended Lord of the Rings trilogy in one sitting. A mobile device with no juice is about as useful as a deflated basketball, which is why I've long been surprised that battery life doesn't often get the attention it deserves in product reviews.
How to stretch your iPhone's battery as far as it can possibly go
We've all been in this situation before: You haven't plugged in your iPhone in a couple of days and now you have just a sliver of battery life left. Your phone has been warning you that it's near death, but you have nowhere to charge it. At this point, you don't care if your phone is the fastest or most powerful; you're waiting for an important call and you just want it to live as long as possible before it faints to a black screen. Are you ready to sacrifice almost everything that makes your iPhone a fantastic device for a few more precious moments of power? Then let's get to it! You'll be doing all of your work in the settings menu, so once you've got it open, here's what you need to do: WiFi = Off Bluetooth = Off Cellular -> Cellular Data = Off (this will also turn off LTE automatically) Privacy -> Location Services = Off Wallpaper & Brightness -> Auto-Brightness = Off (Slide your brightness all the way down as well) General -> Background App Refresh = Off (Keeps apps from gobbling power in the background) General -> Accessibility -> Reduce Motion = On (No need to waste juice on 3D flair) Sounds -> Vibrate on Ring = Off Sounds -> Vibrate on Silent = Off Messages -> iMessage = Off (iMessage can require more data, and power, than texting) Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data -> Push = Off Mail, Contacts, Calendars -> Fetch New Data -> Fetch = Manually (No data use unless you say so) With these settings tweaked, your iPhone won't be able to send or receive data either by WiFi or cellular connection, so keep that in mind. Your iPhone can still play games that don't require an internet connection, send texts, take photos and video and, of course, make and receive calls. And with nearly every bell and whistle removed, it should live as long as physically possible.
Xbox One update: Battery life and storage space are mysteries no more
Microsoft has scheduled an Xbox One system update for February 11, harnessing the computational power of its next-generation system to display real-time data on electrochemical energy expenditure within tethered input devices. So, yes, the controller battery life indicator is coming back, as seen above. Though the controller's electrical endurance is one of the Xbox One's more successful features, it's also one of two oddly obfuscated bits of information. The other is also being addressed in the Xbox One's space-age update, which allows you to see how much room your games and apps are taking up on the 500GB hard drive. The lack of direct management options was one of the criticisms in our review of the Xbox One. Microsoft says apps (like Netflix) and games (like Tomb Raider) will now be split into separate lists, queues, and restrooms. You'll also be able to better manage download and installation queues, and use a USB keyboard if you want a mechanical sound to go with the beeps and boops of text entry. Xbox's Chief Product Officer Marc Whitten says the update has "lots of behind-the-scenes updates for developers," along with improvements to stability and Kinect voice command recognition. Whitten teases more information to come on "several new features we believe Xbox fans will love," including a hypnotic suggestion module. The February 11 update will be followed by another on March 4, meant to prepare the system for Titanfall. [Image: Microsoft]
Nintendo now selling 'high-capacity' Wii U GamePad battery
The Wii U GamePad's wireless nature is kind of a figure of speech, what with how often its out-of-the-box battery life requires a charge. Nintendo's high-capacity GamePad battery has jumped shores to offer a solution to the annoyance, as long as you're willing to pay $32 for it. The product listing states the new battery pack "offers up to 8 hours of use," which it compares to the existing GamePad battery's "3-5 hours." Users will need just a screwdriver to install it before they get back to hosting parties with Super Mario 3D World and discovering nightmare-worthy creatures in Pikmin 3.
iPad Air manages 24 hours of battery life as LTE hotspot
One of the unsung uses of the iPad is as a personal LTE hotspot. It's rather easy to set up the device as a hotspot for a MacBook if you need to work away from WiFi, although you'll need to keep an eye on your data usage. Last year, Anand Lal Shimpi at Anandtech discovered that an LTE iPad 3 could work as a wireless hotspot for 25.28 hours, downloading data at 50 KB/s. Shimpi repeated his test with the new iPad Air and discovered that even despite having a much smaller battery, the iPad Air can run for 24.08 hours as a hotspot at twice the throughput rate (100 KB/s). The iPad Air battery is quite a bit smaller due to the slim profile of the device -- it's a 32.4 Wh battery compared with the 42.5 Wh battery built into the third-generation iPad. As Shimpi points out, both the A7 system-on-a-chip and the Qualcomm MDM9615M modem in the iPad Air use a 28nm LP process that sips power. Shimpi's test was to set the iPad Air up as a personal hotspot, using WiFi tethering to connect it to a 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. He started the 100 KB/s transfer -- twice the data rate of the earlier test -- and turned the iPad Air's display off. After a day and 8 GB of data transfers, the iPad Air ran out of juice. As Shimpi notes, "you'll likely burn through your monthly data allotment before you run out of power."
Wii U GamePad high-capacity battery lights up the UK, Germany
A high-capacity battery for Wii U GamePads is officially out in Europe, available via Amazon in the UK for £25 and in Germany for EUR 35. The longer-lasting battery was first announced for the Japanese market on May 30. The new battery packs in 2,500mAh for five to eight hours of playtime, compared with the original GamePad battery's 1,500mAh and three to five hours of untethered gaming. There are existing off-brand batteries that offer similarly super-charged GamePad life. There's no word on a North American launch of the official GamePad high-capacity battery.
How to stop iOS 7 from destroying your iPhone's battery life
iOS 7 is all kinds of sexy, but with a slew of fancy new features comes more strain on the ever-important statistic of battery life. iOS 7 is compatible with iPhone 4 or later (though not all features are supported on older devices), so if you're upgrading your current device to the new operating system, there's a good chance you could see a noticeable decrease in battery life. If you're looking to avoid any pitfalls in the battery department, here are a few settings you can tweak to keep iOS 7 from sucking your iPhone's life like an evil, software vampire. Disable background refresh iOS 7 lets certain apps refresh even when you're not using them, which is both super convenient and a big problem for users who want the most out of their batteries. Disabling Background Refresh entirely would be your best bet, but even disabling the feature on just a few apps should help your device remain lively for a bit longer. Alter your location services It seems like just about every app wants to track your location these days. For some apps, like Maps, this makes a lot of sense, but if you've authorized other apps (Twitter, Facebook) to track your location without actually using the in-app features that go along with it, you should turn it off. In addition to apps, iOS 7 has a whole host of system-level options for location tracking, including local advertising and even the compass. If you don't use the apps to begin with, turning off the GPS tracking won't do much, but if you can disable tracking for a few of your most-used apps, you could see a decent boost in battery life. Not using AirDrop? Kill it iOS 7 introduces AirDrop to the iPhone for the first time, but even if you find yourself using the handy Dropbox-style feature from time to time, you should be turning it off when you don't need it. This is made easy by the new Control Center in iOS 7, which can be brought up by swiping upwards on the home screen. From here, it's just two taps to either enable or disable AirDrop, and while you're here, you can also disable Bluetooth and/or WiFi to help save additional battery life when you're not using them. Note: AirDrop is not available on the iPhone 4 or 4S. 3D goes bye-bye OK, this one is going to hurt: You know that fancy 3D parallax wallpaper effect that iOS 7 introduces? Unfortunately for users who want the most out of their battery, it's a luxury that does nothing but burn power to make your home screen look cool. You can disable this feature by toggling on the "Reduce Motion" option in the Accessibility menu. The same goes for the new dynamic wallpapers. Yes, a moving background image is a pleasant bit of eye candy, but it serves no functional purpose other than shortening your time between charges. Kick these features to the curb and your battery will thank you. [Want to help your friends and family grok the iOS 7 story? Send them a link to our Don't Panic Guide to iOS 7. --Ed.]
Apple ups battery capacity on iPhone 5c and 5s compared to iPhone 5
Over the past few years, Apple has demonstrated an uncanny ability to enhance performance with each successive iteration of the iPhone while simultaneously maintaining, and sometimes increasing, battery life. The recently unveiled iPhone 5s and 5c are no different. Anandtech recently dug through some FCC documentation and found that the advertised battery capacity on the iPhone 5s is nearly 10 percent larger than on the iPhone 5. Meanwhile, battery capacity on the iPhone 5c is approximately 5 percent larger than on the iPhone 5. It turns out that there are in fact some battery size increases for both the 5S and 5C if the FCC disclosure is to be believed. While I'm somewhat skeptical sometimes of the accuracy of battery capacities as reported in FCC disclosures (which I noted about the battery size for the Nexus 5), these numbers seem credible given what I've heard, the statement Apple made during the keynote about the 5C battery size going up, and what I'd expect with some board re-layout for the 5S. The iPhone 5S ends up getting an almost 10 percent increase in size versus the iPhone 5, the iPhone 5C goes up around 5 percent versus the iPhone 5. As for how this affects real-world usage, Apple noted during its keynote earlier this week that 3G talk time and LTE browsing time on both phones check in at an impressive 10 hours, marking a 25 percent increase from the iPhone 5. Also of note, standby time on both devices have been upped from 225 hours to 250 hours when measured against the iPhone 5. As we've noted before, battery life may not be the sexiest of specs to advertise, but it's something that enhances the user experience greatly and yet is quizzically overlooked by critics.
It's all about the battery life, baby
At WWDC this year, Apple introduced revamped MacBook Airs with incredibly impressive battery life. On the the 11-inch model, battery life went up from five hours to nine hours while battery life on the 13-inch model went up from seven hours to 12 hours. Battery life isn't exactly the sexiest of specs, but it's undoubtedly one of the most important things to consider when purchasing any new device. With the new MacBook Airs, Apple has demonstrated, yet again, a deep commitment to the user experience that will inevitably leave competitors scrambling to play catch-up. If a device runs out of juice, it's useless. Pure and simple. To that end, Apple has not only shown a ongoing commitment to improve battery life on its products, but also a rare reluctance to implement new features that have an adverse effect on battery life. The most obvious example, of course, has been Apple's refusal to follow in the footsteps of Samsung and release an iPhone with a ginormous 4.7-inch screen. Tim Cook and other Apple executives have said on a number of occassions that one of the reasons Apple hasn't released a larger screened iPhone is because doing so would have a discernable effect on battery life. What's more, when Apple does add a new feature to a device, such as when it introduced the Retina display iPad, it ensures that battery life does not take noticeable hit as a result. Put simply, battery life matters. A lot. Processing power and screen size may be the type of specs that attract the most attention these days, but as computing continues to become increasingly mobile, it's about time we start paying more attention to battery life. To that end, Ben Bajarin over at Techpinions has an interesting and insightful take on battery life and the new role it may take on in the tech marketplace. The raging question throughout the PC industry has been "what is going to get consumers to upgrade their PCs?" The answer is iPad-like battery life. ... At one point in time when a company released a new PC, they proudly announced how much processing power it had, and the crowd would applaud. At WWDC last week when Apple discussed the MacBook Air, the crowd did not cheer or applaud when they announced the speed of the processor. Instead, the crowd went wild when they announced the new metrics for battery life. ... Apple has set the bar high with these new battery benchmarks. All PC makers are making progress in this area and the new processors from Intel and AMD will help push this needle forward. One thing I will be watching very closely with the fall lineup is the battery life claims from all the new notebooks. I am convinced this is the feature-of-all-features for the PC industry this year. As a quick little comparison, I checked out the top four non-Apple laptops on Amazon and took a look at their battery life. Here's how the competition stacks up today. The 11.6-inch Samsung Chromebook touts 6.5 hours of battery life. The 15.6-inch Asus K55N-DS81 laptop has 5.5 hours of battery life. A 15.6-inch Dell Inspiron laptop touts about 4 hours of battery life. A 15.6-inch HP Pavillion shockingly doesn't seem to have any official spec regarding battery life, at least not on Amazon. Checking the same machine on Staples, however, reveals that the machine has a battery life of up to 3 hours and 15 minutes. Again, the 13-inch MacBook Air sports upwards of 12 hours of battery life. All of a sudden, battery life is looking a lot sexier than ever before. And if you think the 12-hour figure cited by Apple can only be achieved by running the machine on the lowest brightness setting and casually checking email once every four hours, think again. Initial reviews of Apple's new MacBook Airs have had nothing but overwhelming praise for their battery life. Here's a quick sampling. Engadget: Our standard rundown test, as it happens, also entails playing video and last year's machine managed just over six and a half hours before expiring. We were, then, skeptical that this new edition could manage nearly twice that longevity -- but it actually did better. This year's Air survived 12 hours and 51 minutes on a charge. That's a stunning number from a laptop this thin, achieved with WiFi enabled and without any external batteries. Wired: But with the 2013 edition of the 13-inch MacBook Air, concern over battery life is now just laughable. I've been testing Apple's newest ultraportable laptop for a couple of weeks, and I can routinely get through a full 8 to 12-hour workday without a boost, and with battery to spare. Heck, I went an entire Netflix-filled weekend without needing to plug it in once. Where the mid-2012 model got a very respectable 7 hours of battery life, the 2013 model is spec'd at a full 12 hours. It delivers on that promise, and then some. I can forget the charger at home or at work and totally not stress about it. The Verge: 13 hours and 29 minutes. That's all you really need to know - that's how long the new MacBook Air running Safari lasted running The Verge Battery Test, which cycles through a series of websites and images at 65 percent brightness. 9to5Mac: We don't have a specific process to test battery life, because more often than not, you'll get artificial results that aren't relatable to real-world usage. So, to test the battery life on the 2013 Air, we just used it. It's as simple as that. We worked on it and we played on it. We started using it about 12PM and wrote, watched a few YouTube videos, checked Twitter with Tweetbot for Mac, and much more. By about 1AM it was down to about 5% battery remaining and it died shortly there after. That equals out to a little over 13 hours, a tad above what Apple claimed. We had the screen set on 75% brightness and the keyboard backlight on towards the end of the day. Keep in mind this is real-word usage, so there were bits and pieces of time throughout the day when it wasn't being used, as we had to do things like eat lunch, but for the better part of the day, there was at least Spotify streaming music. With the new MacBook Airs, it's all about the battery life.
iPhone users seeing battery life issues after upgrading to iOS 6.1
Some iPhone and iPad owners are reporting problems with battery life after installing the latest iOS 6.1 update, according to a Macworld UK report. Apple's support forums are rife with reports of excessive power drain that has decreased battery life to as little as two to three hours for some customers. iPhone and iPad owners are troubleshooting the problem, and some have traced the issue back to Exchange calendar sync. Others report a full restore via iTunes has corrected the problem. Apple has not yet commented on the complaints. This isn't the first controversy surrounding iOS 6.1. Last week, Vodafone UK told iPhone 4S owners to not install the iOS 6.1 update. The wireless carrier cited a performance problem with 3G and confirmed that Apple was working on the problem.
iPad, iPad mini win battery life shootout among tablets
UK consumer watchdog site Which? has tested the world's leading tablets to see how their battery life compares and both the iPad with Retina display and the iPad mini came out on top by a large margin. To be fair to all tablets, Which? took into account the screen size and brightness of each one. First, testers divided the tablets into two categories: those with screen sizes of 9.4-inches and larger and those with screen sizes of 7.9-inches and smaller. Then the company used a light meter to set the screen brightness of each tablet to 200 nits. For its tests, Which? measured the battery life of the tablets while using WiFi and 3G connections (if applicable) for web browsing and while watching videos. Out of the seven tablets tested in the 10-inch category for WiFi browsing, the iPad with Retina display handily beat out the rest of the competition. It tallied up a total of 811 minutes of WiFi browsing (that's 13.5 hours). The iPad 2 came in a distant second place at 590 minutes (9.8 hours). By comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1 came in at 532 minutes (8.8 hours) and the Microsoft Surface RT came in at 501 minutes (8.3 hours). The Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime came in at the bottom with a mere 335 minutes (5.5 hours). Of the five tablets tested in the 7-inch category the iPad mini was the big winner -- and by a wide margin. It came in at 783 minutes (13 hours) while the runner up, the Amazon Kindle Fire HD, came in at 591 minutes (9.8 hours). The Nexus 7 scored third at 550 minutes (9.1 hours) while the Amazon Kindle Fire came in at 437 minutes (7.2 hours) and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 came in last at 425 minutes (seven hours).
How the iPhone 5 got its 'insanely great' A6 processor
It's hard not to be impressed by the A6 engine in the new iPhone 5, since it's now proven to deliver a double-shot of great performance and class-leading battery life. But silicon stories like that don't happen over night or even over the course of a year -- in fact, analyst Linley Gwennap has traced the origins of the A6 all the way back to 2008, when Steve Jobs purchased processor design company P.A. Semi and set one of its teams to work on creating something "insanely great" for mobile devices. Although Apple is steadfastly secretive about its components, Gwennap's history of the A6 (linked below) is both plausible and a straight-up good read for anyone interested in the more fundamental aspects of their gadgets. Whereas the A5 processor stuck closely to ARM's Cortex-A9 design, Gwennap is convinced -- just like Anandtech is --that the A6 treads a very different path: it's still based on ARM's architecture and it's likely fabricated by Samsung using a cutting-edge 32nm process, but it's an in-house vision of what a mobile chip should be. It's the culmination of four years of hard work and perhaps half a billion dollars of investment. That's not to say it's the most powerful chip out there, or even the chip most tailored to its host device -- after all, Samsung also designs great chips for some of its own smartphones. Indeed, Gwennap says that the A6 is probably a dual-core processor that is no more complex than Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 (let alone the S4 Pro) or the forthcoming generation of Cortex-A15 chips, while its clock speed could be as low as 1.2GHz -- versus a 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos in the Note II and even a 2GHz Intel chip in Motorola's new RAZR i. However, Gwennap predicted that even if the A6 falls short of its rivals "in raw CPU performance," it'd make up for it in terms of low power consumption -- which is precisely what we've confirmed in our review.
Editorial: Physics and politics stand in the way of true mobile
Progress is lumpy. The future is attained in a series of epochal strides, each followed by a lot of relatively inconsequential shuffling forward. The invention of the internet (and especially the consumer-friendly web) was a rare giant step that motivated immense adoption of computers and digital lifestyles. A global marketplace of online citizens spawned gadgets, software apps, corporate gold-rushing and other feverish shuffling. Even with the opulent gadgetry we admire and enjoy, the whole expanding tech bubble seems to be reaching for something beyond itself. The incremental improvements of personal technology don't thrust into the future as much as push against constraining walls of the present. Sharper screens and thinner computers are delightful results of corporate development cycles. But we are tethered to the present, which one day will seem primitive in retrospect, by two unglamorous bridles: power and connectivity.
Nyko Power Grip for PlayStation Vita review: a $25 accessory that promises to double your battery life
Gaming accessories come in all shapes and sizes --- replacement controllers, portable console suitcases, specialized mice, control augmenting nubs, you name it. Whatever your niche, you can bet there's a product out there to fill it. Nyko, in particular, has made a bit of a habit of fulfilling a particular need: manufacturing third-party battery accessories for all those short-lived handhelds. The outfit has such a solid track record in the category, in fact, that we had little doubt its PlayStation Vita Power Grip ($25) would live up to its life-giving hype -- but we decided to put it to the test all the same. %Gallery-162642%
Ford, GE and University of Michigan team up on sensor to track EV battery life, keep us on the road
Believe it or not, EV battery life is still something of a Pandora's Box, even for automakers: they can tell you the battery pack's current and voltage, but not how it's really performing under pressure. Ford, GE and the University of Michigan are uniting to unlock that mystery through a new ARPA-E project. In its role, GE is developing a minuscule sensor array that will track the nuances of battery cells that existing technology misses; it will promptly hand the baton to researchers at the University of Michigan, who plan to both prove that GE's data is on the mark as well as develop tricks for predicting behavior. Ford handles the last mile, almost literally: it's planning to fit the GE sensor technology to one of its cars and test in a more realistic environment. Before you fantasize about knowing the lifespan of your Focus Electric's battery down to the minute, however, the new alliance is stressing that it's only just getting started -- there's another three years and $3.1 million to go before the project wraps up. If all goes according to plan, though, we'll have electric cars and plug-in hybrids that can not only tell when they've seen better days but can eke out extra miles through smarter battery designs.
Poll: Is Mountain Lion devouring your Mac's battery life?
We've seen plenty of users report that Apple's latest OS, Mountain Lion, has caused a massive drop in battery life. While we haven't been able to confirm any decrease in longevity with our own OS 10.8 machines, which include previous generation MacBook Pros and the company's latest Retina model, it's clear that some of you who were able to get the operating system downloaded and installed have experienced some not-so-favorable side effects with your Pros and MacBook Airs. While there are plenty of theories, there has yet to be a fix, though Apple is reportedly investigating the issue. This isn't the first time users have reported decreased battery life after an OS update, with a lengthy support thread popping up after Lion's release last year. So, how has the upgrade affected you? Sound off in the poll below to let us know.%Poll-76894%
Review: PowerSkin battery pack and protective case for iPhone
PowerSkin is an all-in-one external battery pack and silicon protective case for your iPhone 4 or 4S. It promises to double the performance of your iPhone's battery while protecting it from knocks and drops with a 100% recyclable silicone case. Personally, I've never been the kind of guy to use a protective case or extra battery packs for my phone. Usually, I'm never more than a day away from charging my iPhone, and although the idea of protecting my iPhone with a case really does appeal, I've always felt a protective case adds too much bulk and weight to make it practical for me. So when I got the opportunity to spend some time with the PowerSkin, I was curious as to how much of an impact it would make on my habits with regards to using my phone. Typically, I get through a day with between 10% - 20% charge left on my iPhone. I then put it on to charge through the night, so I'm all good to go with a fully charged battery in the morning. I wouldn't say I'm a heavy user, but I use my iPhone for data and calls throughout most of the day. If I'm away and I don't get a chance to charge up, I know my iPhone will see me through the day, and night, to about the first thing the next morning before it dies. So about 23 hours of my typical usage before my iPhone dies. With the PowerSkin, I'm pleased to say I got just shy of twice the battery life of my iPhone: a total of 45 hours. If I'd turned my iPhone off through the night, I probably could have knocked that figure up a few hours. But, for nearly two whole days, I didn't have to charge my iPhone. I have to say, it was a little disconcerting not putting my phone into its dock for its nightly juice-up. But I was also reminded of previous mobile phones I've owned, maybe 7 or 8 years ago, where I wouldn't think to charge the phone for two or three days as standard. Things certainly have changed! The PowerSkin has some nifty features as well as a great battery. It has a built-in LED light indicator to tell you how much charge left, and an on/off switch if you want to turn the external battery off altogether. Charging is made simple enough with a USB cable plugged into your Mac, PC or USB mains adapter -- the PowerSkin also makes sure the iPhone battery charges first, before its own. Another nice touch is synginc to iTunes while charging -- a bonus if you're not using WiFi syncing. The protective case fits snugly around the iPhone, with all buttons, sensors and the camera unobstructed. And it's easy to put the phone in the case or take it out. With the case on, there is a serious bit of bulk attached to the phone. In my rough estimates, it adds about the bulk of another iPhone to your current iPhone, plus a bit of extra length at the bottom of the phone. It's not unusable in any way, but it did make me feel like I was using a mobile phone from the late 1990s, and I was much more aware of my iPhone in my trouser pocket. The silicon case itself provided adequate protection. If I was to drop my iPhone with the case on, I'd still be concerned, but the back and corners are well covered -- it's just the screen which is still exposed. Although I'm not a fan of protective cases and battery packs because of their extra bulk and weight (as mentioned above), the PowerSkin does a great job at providing protection and extra juice for when you need it. I can certainly see the benefits of having one in easy reach for those moments when you unexpectedly need an extra charge or some protection in a precarious mobile phone situation. With out the phone inside, the PowerSkin can easily disappear into a bag pocket or desk draw for such occasions. If you're like me and you prefer your iPhone sans case and additional battery, the US$69.99 price tag will perhaps feel a little on the pricey side for such occasional uses. But if you know that regularly you're going to come up short on charge, and could do with the protection, the PowerSkin is certainly worth checking out.
Android apps that use power control APIs are often 'battery killers,' oh the irony
If there's one thing Purdue University researchers can't stand, it's an inefficient Android app. They've already revealed how some titles burn huge amounts of energy just by running ads (e.g., Angry Birds uses 63 percent of its resources for flogging stuff rather than flinging stuff), and now they've confirmed something else that has long been suspected: many offerings on Google Play also contain serious "energy bugs." Specifically, these are apps that use Android's power control or wakelock APIs to prevent a phone going into sleep mode. The majority of developers use wakelocks properly, but around a quarter make mistakes in how they juggle different APIs, which can cause a fully-charged phone to drain "in as little as five hours." Out of 187 wakelock-exploiting apps tested, 42 contained errors -- although the academics stopped short of naming and shaming. There's a chance they'll list the culprits when they present their paper next week, which will also propose an automatic method for detecting the glitches. Will that be another app?
Army scientists juice battery voltage, hike life up to 30 percent
With the modern US soldier turning into a walking gadget, the army has some heavy reasons to lower battery weights. Its own scientists might have the answer, claiming 30 percent energy density jumps could happen using additives they developed. Those "sacrificial agent" materials would bond with electrodes to allow five volts instead of the four they've been stuck on, permitting a "quantum leap" in efficiency and weight. We'll have to see if that'll come to pass, but given the sheer volume of tech that soldiers are strapping on these days, it couldn't be too soon. To see a video of how it works, zap past the break.
Nintendo clocks Wii U controller life in at three to five hours on a charge
Nintendo wasn't particularly forthcoming with the specs at its keynote earlier today -- and, well, some things are probably best not mentioned when attempting to hype up your new console. Like, say, the three to five hour battery life on the Wii U GamePad. That's the word coming from a spec sheet posted by the gaming giant. Of course, that usage depends on factors like the brightness of the screen, and Nintendo warns that things may end up being shorter in the end. The slightly better news here is that you can plug the controller in to charge while playing, so that's something, right?
