You know what bothers me about modern mobile devices?

"bhtooefr" (bhtooefr) 12/27/2018 at 12:16 • Filed to: electronics, mobile, calculopnik, calculator

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Energy efficiency has been completely deprioritized.

Here, have a video from the HP Handheld Conference 2011, in which the program manager for the HP 12C calculator talks about battery life (jump to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! if that got removed):

With two (presumably LR44) button cells - so about 3 V and 110 mAh nominal - they found that 3-6 months worst-case battery life was unacceptable, so they redesigned the case to fit a third cell in there. And, with that third cell , t here’s plenty of anecdotes of calculators lasting over a decade on a set of cells .

Meanwhile today , 3-6 hours worst-case battery life on a 3.8 V, 3000+ mAh nominal battery is considered perfectly acceptable on our modern phones - sure, they do a lot more, but still, come on.

jimz > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 12:19

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this is kind of like complaining how a Challenger Hellcat gets worse gas mileage than a 1990 Geo Metro. 

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 12:27

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Reasons I love my old flip phone:

1. No constant connection, I can actually enjoy the things I’m doing.

2. I charge my phone once or twice a week depending on how many calls I make.

3. It takes decent pics ( used to, 8 yrs of crap/scratches on the lense don’t help ).

4. It makes/receives calls.

5. I rarely have reception issues.  

Tekamul > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 12:30

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Most of that lost power is going to antennae. It’s tough to get around that if you want 4G LTE & WiFi. That and the backlight. Limit those two things, and you can stretch the life a lot.

The CPU, GPU, memory and LCD combined are usually a little more than the backlight (depending what you’re doing) and about half what the combined RF interfaces use. 

farscythe - makin da cawfee! > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 12:30

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my old 3310 would do nearly 2 weeks before needing a charge

my new 7plus does tooo (if dont use for anything more than checking the time twice daily)

Spanfeller is a twat > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 12:31

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I don’t know about you... but my 13' Macbook Pro is rated for the same power consumption as my 08' (85W) did, yet it has a lot more processing power, a better display, more memory, and more storage to maintain.

I know its a lot more complicated, but I can’t get out more than I put in, yet this computer is significantly better.

Actually, look at Mac Pro ’s consumption and BTU emission; those have become more efficient with each generation.

Future Heap Owner > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 12:31

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The software deserves a lot of blame for this one too.  Think of how much JavaScript your phone runs (even for “native” apps). The economics of app development reward features and development velocity, not efficiency.

Nibby > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 12:32

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then get a startec

jimz > Tekamul 12/27/2018 at 12:36

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yep. just look at the iPod touch compared to its contemporary iPhone model. The Touch had a smaller battery than the iPhone and was much thinner despite being based on the same CPU and display.  Those cellular/LTE modems are power suckers. 

Chuckles > jimz 12/27/2018 at 12:37

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I disagree. This is more like if every car on sale in 2018 had worse gas mileage than every car from 1990.

Spanfeller is a twat > Chuckles 12/27/2018 at 12:42

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The average gas mileage hasn't gone significantly up, but the speeds have, the comfort has, the safety has, the space and cargo capacity has, everything has! if we made a car with the expectations that we had from cars back in the 80s with modern engines, they'd get super high fuel economies.

Tekamul > Spanfeller is a twat 12/27/2018 at 12:44

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I believe that’s called a Prius C

Spanfeller is a twat > Tekamul 12/27/2018 at 12:46

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I did just review one! I’d say the real car like that would the Yaris sold here in Mexico. it gets close to the Prius!

facw > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 12:46

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Which is fine. It turns out that when you have easy rechargability, people don’t care as much about battery life. It’s true that with button cells, probably screwed into the device, no one wants to mess with that. But if it lasts all day, that’s usually plenty to get it to a charger.

The market clearly prefers more capable  devices, even if it means more charging. Otherwise we’d all have e-paper screens and radios that spend most of their time asleep, and giant Zach Morris style phones.

bhtooefr > Tekamul 12/27/2018 at 12:46

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Mind you, there’s room to improve things on those fronts - move back to transflective displays that don’t need as much backlight to be readable, use data compression proxies and server-side processing to reduce CPU and radio demand, etc., etc.

But, some of this is simply... when you’re using comparatively expensive non-rechargeable cells, you have to make them last as long as humanly possible, and there’s a focus on energy efficiency that just isn’t there in modern hardware. (I’ve seen where the voltage regulators in modern cell phones are an order or two of magnitude less efficient than the stuff used in non-rechargeable electronics 30-40 years ago, just because there’s no need to optimize that much.)

bhtooefr > Spanfeller is a twat 12/27/2018 at 12:48

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Worth noting that, at least from my perspective, the extreme emphasis on energy efficiency in mobile devices died about 15-25   years ago depending on the device, and laptops were one of the areas it died the earliest (in 1991, there were predictions that the 12 hour laptop would be the norm... instead, in 1992, color backlit LCDs and 486s took off, and battery life got worse instead of better).

jimz > Chuckles 12/27/2018 at 12:51

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I think the point is that the devices are so different in purpose that this kind of comparison is off base. The 12C is nothing more than a financial calculator. It is the definition of “one job to do.” it has a very tiny ARM M4 core, and is designed to “sleep” the core logic at all costs. when you’re not actively using it, the M4 is basically shut off, and the static RAM maintains state without a clock signal . then it wakes within 15 microseconds when you start pushing buttons. the only way to get better than that is to use a MCU which uses static logic (will maintain state when the clock signal is stopped.)  it can run so long on tiny coin cells because 99.999% of the time the thing is basically off. Mobile phones don’t have that luxury; they legitimately do need to have stuff running all the time, e.g. with the modem on to receive calls and texts. the CPU may be in a low power state when idle, but at least part of it is always powered on and doing something. 

Spanfeller is a twat > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 12:52

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Well, because the industry started realizing that processing power was going up a lot faster than energy density, and that consumers demanded a graphical interface that required bright, colour screens with audio options.

I don’t think it’s a fair assertion that energy efficiency was ignored, it’s just that the demands are very different. In fact, I bet that if you could somehow plug in 200 1980s laptops and have them do the same amount of tasks as a 2018 laptop at the same time that the 2018 laptop is displaying a movie; the laptop would’ve consumed less energy.

Tekamul > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 12:53

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The lack of efficiency is usually tied to form factor. The push to fit in a tight package w/o as many external RLCs.

As for source compression, it doesn’t work out well when most of the data is web-based. All these separate chunks sourced from different locations would have to be assembled and compressed, which slows down load times. Users prefer the piecemeal loading of the current model, rather than staring at a white screen.

facw > Chuckles 12/27/2018 at 12:53

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More like complaining that every car on sale gets worse gas mileage than a scooter from 1990. These devices are vastly more capable. And every part of them is more efficient. The batteries are denser, the processors use way less power for a given calculation, screens use less power for the amount of light they generate, radios use less power for the amount of data they send.

It’s just that the market wants thinner, faster, brighter, and more connected devices. With modern tech, it would be possible to build a “just a phone” device with really long run time, but it turns out that’s not what people want. You can see some related examples though, for instance, Logitech makes a mouse with a three-year run-time (personally though, it’s not a hassle for me to plug into USB or swap a new rechargeable in from the charger every couple weeks).  

bhtooefr > Nibby 12/27/2018 at 12:54

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Honestly, I think my ideal is something like a BlackBerry 77x0, with as much as possible offloaded to a server (think Opera Mini-like browser, server-side handling of persistent connections, etc., etc.) , with modern technological advances to reduce power consumption, modern network support, and some inspiration from Palm OS for the UI.

Chuckles > jimz 12/27/2018 at 12:58

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I agree, my point was that Hellcat vs Metro was comparing old economy vs new performance, when the reality is that every single phone in 2018 has way better performance than those old bricks and also has worse battery life. It's understandable because they do so much more work, but it's also kind of a bummer because nobody makes a simple, durable, long lasting phone these days. Everything is edge to edge glass, requires a bulky case, and needs to be charged at least every night if not more often.

bhtooefr > Tekamul 12/27/2018 at 12:58

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Sure, but a 130 W Xeon on, say, a gigabit pipe can crunch through the whole thing a hell of a lot faster than a shitty 5 W Qualcomm chip on a 25 megabit LTE connection, and then maybe I only need 0.1 W of CPU on that same 25 megabit pipe, for less time.

Chuckles > facw 12/27/2018 at 13:01

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I agree with your comparison, if you also add the caveat that nobody even sells scooters in 2018. I fully understand that new phones are orders of magnitude better and more powerful than old ones, but I do think that there is still a market for simplified, durable, long battery life phones. What I really wish is that I had the ability to easily switch between phones on a daily basis. 

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 13:02

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A Texas In struments Ti-84CE , which is incredibly powerful for a calculator, operates at 50 Mhz. A Galaxy S9 has a 2.8Ghz processor. This is 56 times   more processing power than the Ti-84CE . Considering the phone also has various wireless radios , a high-res screen, and a graphics chip all drawing power, I think the S9' s twenty hour battery life is astounding compared to a month for the Ti-84.

Tekamul > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 13:03

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Yeah, but how much is Verizon going to charge you for that? Their processor, their power, saving data on a network they’ve already built up. You u sing more data gets them PAID.

I agree, in a perfect world they would send as little data as necessary (literally the focus of a research project I’m doing) but it has to turn somebody a profit. 

jimz > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 13:06

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But, some of this is simply... when you’re using comparatively expensive non-rechargeable cells, you have to make t hem last as long as humanly possible, and there’s a focus on energy efficiency that just isn’t there in modern hardware.

there’s something to that; IMO one of the big reasons people don’t really care about the short battery life per charge of smartphones is simply because USB ports are everywhere.  

bhtooefr > Tekamul 12/27/2018 at 13:06

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Could always use the BlackBerry model, where they ran the servers, or set it up so you could run the server yourself . (And, Opera Mini runs on Opera’s servers at no charge , although you pay in your data being mineable by them.)

Tekamul > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 13:10

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Android had a feature for that too, called ‘Data Saver’ in Chrome. It’s a mix of compression, and dumbing down big pages.

facw > Chuckles 12/27/2018 at 13:11

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I mean they do still “scooter” devices, it’s just that instead of using new tech to make them last longer (or even the same amount of time), they’ve generally used that new tech to make them dirt-cheap instead.

Chuckles > facw 12/27/2018 at 13:19

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The vehicular metaphor is breaking down a bit. I guess I'm just salty that in 2018, every major phone carrier / manufacturer has declared in unison "this is what phones are now! Don't like it, too bad!" When I think that there is still a market for something different. I don't always need the internet on my phone, and at times I would legitimately be better off without it. But I can't just wake up and select between my smartphone and a simple phone like I might choose between taking my car or riding a bike to work.

Urambo Tauro > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness 12/27/2018 at 16:23

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It takes decent pics

I chuckled. (and I thought the pics in my wrenching posts were bad!) XD

Seriously though, I with you. In fact, I just upgraded from an old flip phone with a 2MP camera to one with a 3MP camera!

Urambo Tauro > Nibby 12/27/2018 at 16:27

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That’s Star TAC ! LOL that was my first phone too. I don’t recall what the battery life was like on it, but then again my plan was only 25 min a month, so I never really put it through its paces.

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > Urambo Tauro 12/27/2018 at 16:44

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Mine has a 3mp camera, it’s just very banged up from years of use/abuse. When I first got it it took excellent pics, I would say better than a lot of smart phones, but time has taken it’s toll.

Early pic:

Recent pic:

Doesn’t help any either that my “wrenching” pics are usually taken in a hurry and with nasty hands.

Urambo Tauro > Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness 12/27/2018 at 17:03

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Yeah, I’ve gotten into the habit of always snapping duplicate pics so that I can choose the better one later. F or close-up shots, I’ve gotten into the habit of literally holding a magnifying glass right in front of the lens. It help s lol .

AddictedToM3s - Drives a GC > bhtooefr 12/27/2018 at 18:09

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That’s still a priority it’s just the use case has changed. Before we didn’t live on these devices and so we didn’t care that they didn’t get plugged in or weighed a ton. New devices have more antennas and background processes running that ever. Your notifications are always running. Your Bluetooth is always running. The phone keeps track of location the entire time it’s running. It’s not like before when you would just set an email fetching interval and call it a day.

They actually will throttle the CPU on your mobile device between you typing individual keys just to squeeze out the most life they can. It’s just they make it fit within the phone manufacturers’ defined spec so you have a trade off with usability. You can throttle more but then the user experience is garbage. 

BaconSandwich is tasty. > Future Heap Owner 12/27/2018 at 19:19

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As a software developer, this is what kills me. There's so much inefficient software out there because developers are lazy, and performance is never given time, because it's supposedly more important to ship half baked features than it is to have less features, but actually have them work well.

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > Future Heap Owner 12/27/2018 at 19:44

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The company I work for got hired by a startup, patents were approved, investers were in, they hand it off to engineering, a week in, the software guys “this is shit. We need to redo all of it” instead of doing any sort of logic tree, it was just one massive loop, which in turn required a processor that was orders of magnitude more than needed. Just a shitshow. Whenever I hear people say “we to run this like a startup”, I cringe. 

Future Heap Owner > gmporschenut also a fan of hondas 12/27/2018 at 20:06

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“This is shit” is software engineer for “I didn’t write this”

gmporschenut also a fan of hondas > Future Heap Owner 12/27/2018 at 20:17

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The original coder wasn’t a software engineer, and the shit snowball effect it had on the project was diasterous. They couldn’t get concepts through to their heads like economies of scale,  that yes when Apple, samsung, etc can custom order stuff because they are making millions if not 10s of millions of units. 

Future Heap Owner > gmporschenut also a fan of hondas 12/27/2018 at 21:10

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Oh I think I misunderstood the scenario . Yeah, people rolling together something that barely works together and saying “ship it!” describes way too much software, especially from startups.

Long_Voyager, Now With More Caravanny Goodness > Urambo Tauro 12/28/2018 at 06:53

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I usually don’t have that kind of time when I’m taking pics.

It’s oh shit, I should get a pics of this, ok, good enough, back to work.