Does your Smartphone battery lose its charge too quickly? Perhaps it isn’t the battery that is at fault. With all the favorite apps running in the background of your new Smartphone, the battery usage is dwindling at an alarming rate. There’s the GPS, the HDMI, Facebook, Yahoo Messenger, email, and of course the games, most of which are running in the background. You can download an app called Advanced App Killer to regulate the app usage, but most of us can’t be bothered. Battery technology isn’t keeping up with demand. The real bandit of battery life is the inefficient way in which our devices draw power.
"If you’re listening to music on your MP3 player, you don’t need to send power to the image and graphics processors at the same time," said Harvard graduate student WonYoung Kim. "If you’re just looking at photos, you don’t need to power the audio processor or the HD video processor. It's like shutting off the lights when you leave the room."
There is a new chip with the technology to regulate our Smartphone processor chip’s demands. It’s called Multi Core Voltage Regulator (MCVR), and was developed by Wonyoung Kim, Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. According to Caleb Denison, EarthTechling, “this MCVR is attached directly to a processor at each of its cores and can make lightning-fast adjustments to increase or decrease power as needed. The MCVR uses an algorithm to recognize parts of a processor that are not in use then cuts power to them. This saves energy without sacrificing performance and could do wonders to maintain battery life standards as processor power demands increase.”
Kim’s new device will change laptop designs as well. According to Science Daily, the MCVR might be used to reduce the heat output of the processor. Overheating is a barrier to making slimmer notebooks. The chip may also be a factor in reducing the cost of power-hungry servers as well. Science Daily reports “Essentially a DC-DC converter, the MCVR can take a 2.4-volt input and scale it down to voltages ranging from 0.4 to 1.4V. Built for speed, it can increase or decrease the output by 1V in under 20 nanoseconds.”
"This is a plug-and-play device in the sense that it can be easily incorporated into the design of processor chips," says Kim. "Including the MCVR on a chip would add about 10 percent to the manufacturing cost, but with the potential for 20 percent or more in power savings."
I am all for extending battery life! My Droid X goes through a 1500 mAh battery in no time. I use the Advanced App Killer, and also have set the GPS to only work on demand. I may just have to buy a Droid X extended battery. The one I am looking at is an aftermarket battery with 2300 mAh, which is significantly higher than what my original battery is. It comes with a 1 Year Warranty as well. Very tempting…
What about you? Do you think this new technology is a great solution to battery life? I am almost as excited about the cooler laptops though. I use a laptop cooling pad, but it’s noisy and just one more thing to pack when I travel. I say, “Thumbs up for WonYoung Kim!”
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