Mobile Phone Feature Creep Eating Into Battery Life

As mobile phones shrink in size, yet add tons of new features, not everything has worked out perfectly, and the one big casualty appears to be battery life. A Nokia exec recently explained the dilemma of adding so many new features to smaller and smaller mobile phones - and realizing that the power source just can't live up to expectations. Battery power has been improving, but on a much slower scale than basic technology improvements. The article certainly suggests the need for slightly more revolutionary thinking in terms of power sources for mobile devices. Derek adds: ...although some relief is likely to come from more efficient use of the existing battery capacity. For example, TI has released a one-chip solution for cell phones that combines multiple circuitry into a single chip, allowing more space in the plastic for new features, but also reducing power consumption by 50%. This is similar to Broadcom's one-chip WiFi solution launched over a year ago, which reduced the power requirements for 802.11. Intel's Centrino system for laptops is another example of improvements in power consumption.

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