Texas Instrument Promise All Day Battery Life

[WenWM]

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The battery industry has not seen much improvement since last decade, and with growing power consumption by processors, our battery life is suffering. Luckily, Texas Instrument can change that. In a recent announcement by the official chipset provider for Android 4.0, Texas Instruments promised us our battery back. They indicated that their next generation OMAP processors will come with all day battery life. This promise is for the OMAP 6 processor which isn’t set for launch until 2013. That means we have a year and a half of bad battery life to live through.
They aren’t saying if we will also see performance improvements, but battery seems to be their focus. NVIDIA and TI seem to have opposite views; NVIDIA is going for power, which they seem to achieve every time they release a new processor, while TI is now focusing on all around improvements.

After news like this, I want to know what you guys think about TI VS NVIDIA. Is power our future, or battery life? Voice your thoughts in a reply and vote in the poll.

Via: Phandroid

 

[drkow19]

Power

I think Nvidia is going to be the fastest to have the most cores, while TI will get the most out of having fewer cores. Nvidia is all about running 100 cores and only using as many as you need, so for simple tasks a few cores are active and the rest aren't using any power, but they are still available if the programs are able to be used by that many cores. This is really GPU architecture, but with huge power reduction and the ability to scale power. So to sum it up for Nvidia, I think they will make a push for this massively parallel processing idea, utilizing the tech they already have for GPUs.

TI processors are being more well rounded, as you said. From OMAP 3 to OMAP 4 and 5, they are adding more cores and getting specialized for these new mobile devices, with specific cores being added for multimedia decoding. This is similiar to Nvidia adding the ability for their GPUs to do physics calculations, in that it lowers the CPU cost on the main core and can also do these other calculations on the side. But right now TI is dealing with lackluster performance because they sip such little power. Memory bandwidth is something like 10-25% that of an Intel Atom processor. For OMAP 5 this could be fixed, and depending on the type of memory that is supported and used, but now it will be all about OMAP 6 and how that can compete with desktop/mobile Intel processors. They will win in battery life, but lose in performance. It will really be up to the consumer by then. Oh, and I'm going to bet that Nvidia goes for power over the Atom processors, while still using ARM instructions.

 

[FrellingFrakker]

Smartphones are at the point now where even mid-tier models are more than powerful enough for the average user and even most droidforums type users. I think that better battery life is a much better goal (and probably more profitable) than who can get to 20 cores first.

 

[lieblax]

Smartphones are at the point now where even mid-tier models are more than powerful enough for the average user and even most droidforums type users. I think that better battery life is a much better goal (and probably more profitable) than who can get to 20 cores first.

I completely agree. My d2g is plenty powerful for me, I bought the extended battery and now my battery life is pretty good, but the more the better

 

[matt2783]

I'll take better battery life as well but I have to wonder how much TI can really improve it. I know on my Droid display is consistently using the most battery, and by a large margin. It seems to me like we need more efficient displays to really prolong battery life.

 

[drkow19]

Smartphones are at the point now where even mid-tier models are more than powerful enough for the average user and even most droidforums type users. I think that better battery life is a much better goal (and probably more profitable) than who can get to 20 cores first.

Hehe. I completely DISAGREE. More than powerful enough? To say that about technology is considered heresy. They said that in 1995 when we had 16 mb of RAM in computers. They will never stop getting faster, and there will always be tasks or applications that can eventually make good use of all the power. But no, yeah lets just stop here since this guy is happy with his D2, lol.

It's not just a race to a number of cores, it is a never-ending cycle with computer technology. I think what we are seeing right now is a stall in battery tech which is causing people to become angry, and wonder why in 20 years they can't improve battery life in a cell-phone. Eventually we will get our 2-5 days of battery life in a super-powerful phone so we just have to wait it out.

 

[LT*]

I'll take better battery life as well but I have to wonder how much TI can really improve it. I know on my Droid display is consistently using the most battery, and by a large margin. It seems to me like we need more efficient displays to really prolong battery life.

People can say what they will about PenTile displays, but my D3's Display usage sits at 2-4% of my battery use every day no matter how long I have it on. THe D1 was always at the top of the list for battery drain.

Oh, and I think going with longer battery life at this point makes the most sense.

 

[sqchram]

We dont need more powerful phones. As long as the phone can run the snake game, whats more important is to be able to play snake for 16 hours uninterrupted.

 

[sqchram]

I'll take better battery life as well but I have to wonder how much TI can really improve it. I know on my Droid display is consistently using the most battery, and by a large margin. It seems to me like we need more efficient displays to really prolong battery life.

People can say what they will about PenTile displays, but my D3's Display usage sits at 2-4% of my battery use every day no matter how long I have it on. THe D1 was always at the top of the list for battery drain.

Oh, and I think going with longer battery life at this point makes the most sense.

Wow! That is badass. Cant wait for the bionic!

 

[Chizzele]

I think its good that chipset makers are thinking along these lines.

 

[Adrozz07]

True increase in actual battery capacity is what we need. With the display being the battery hog focusing on the processors is like a band aid on a gunshot wound.

Sent from my ThunderBolt using Tapatalk

 

[matt2783]

I'll take better battery life as well but I have to wonder how much TI can really improve it. I know on my Droid display is consistently using the most battery, and by a large margin. It seems to me like we need more efficient displays to really prolong battery life.

People can say what they will about PenTile displays, but my D3's Display usage sits at 2-4% of my battery use every day no matter how long I have it on. THe D1 was always at the top of the list for battery drain.

Oh, and I think going with longer battery life at this point makes the most sense.

That's actually pretty impressive. Right now my display is using 35% and that will only go up if I use my phone more. I've definitely seen it at 50%. Maybe I'll have to consider the Bionic after all.

 

[FrellingFrakker]

Smartphones are at the point now where even mid-tier models are more than powerful enough for the average user and even most droidforums type users. I think that better battery life is a much better goal (and probably more profitable) than who can get to 20 cores first.

Hehe. I completely DISAGREE. More than powerful enough? To say that about technology is considered heresy. They said that in 1995 when we had 16 mb of RAM in computers. They will never stop getting faster, and there will always be tasks or applications that can eventually make good use of all the power. But no, yeah lets just stop here since this guy is happy with his D2, lol.

It's not just a race to a number of cores, it is a never-ending cycle with computer technology. I think what we are seeing right now is a stall in battery tech which is causing people to become angry, and wonder why in 20 years they can't improve battery life in a cell-phone. Eventually we will get our 2-5 days of battery life in a super-powerful phone so we just have to wait it out.

I never said I wanted them to stop making phones more powerful; I would just rather see an increased focus on improved batter life first.

 

[NeoPhoenixTE]

I read the headline from Twitter on this (TI promises all day battery life) and I had two initial responses:

1.) "...we shall see! Bahaha." Or "Nerds of the world, please join me for an 'o rly?' of epic proportions"

2.) "...wait, TI makes batteries now?"

Now I can see I was totally off. Guess I'll get to go buy that expanded battery after all.

 

[Tillmorn]

So, this question has been in the back of my mind for the longest time, but I sadly just realized it while reading through this thread...

Why is it that Intel is not in on the whole mobile processor deal? It seems to me that given their success in the PC world, they could spank companies like NVIDIA up and down the street, all day long (this coming from a guy who swears by NVIDIA cards). And since they have been trekking through "netbook" type processors for a few years now, how much of a downsize are we talking? Or is there some crucial detail I am missing, besides battery consumption, when it comes to actual computer processors vs. those found in today's smartphones?