14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft's Research unit is working on a brand new technology that could make batteries of smartphones and tablets run for a maximum one week, without any loss in performance.
Basically, Microsoft says that charging a smartphone or tablet every day is at this point one of the main drawbacks of these devices, especially because technology has evolved at a very fast pace in the last couple of years, while the concept behind a battery has received almost no improvements.
Microsoft researcher Ranveer Chandra said during MIT Technology Review’s Digital Summit in San Francisco that Redmond has found a way to boost battery life to approximately one week using a concept that's actually based on a very simple idea.
The problem, he says, isn't necessarily the battery dimension, but the way devices and apps use the available battery. By optimizing everything to use available battery life more efficiently, the device would obviously run for a longer time without any slowdown in performance, he said.
“You can’t just wait for the best battery technology to come along,” he explained. “We can make a lot of progress because systems today don’t use battery intelligently.”
One of the best ways to achieve this goal is to use two smaller lithium-ion batteries instead of a single larger one. With the help of multiple optimizations that were supposed to help the device manage the existing power more efficiently, Microsoft Research managed to create prototypes that could boost battery life by up to 50 percent.
Windows 8's Wi-Fi software is living proof that such optimizations can be implemented, as it's said to be already using a number of energy-saving technologies that could support the extension of battery life. Similar improvements in other apps would clearly enhance the final result, but there's still a lot of work to be done, Chandra explained.
Initially designed for smartphones, the same technology can be borrowed by many other Microsoft technologies, including tablets and wearables, both of which are playing a key role for the Redmond-based software giant.
Microsoft Research is also developing a dedicated software solution for app developers that would help them determine the amount of power used by their programs, in an attempt to cut down the necessary power and thus boost battery life.
Of course, such a feature would clearly represent a pretty big advantage for Microsoft in the fight against Android and iOS, not only on the smartphone market, but also as far as tablets are concerned. Redmond is trying to become a more active player in the hardware industry, so such innovations would clearly boost its market share and increase sales of hardware products.