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PotatoP is a purpose-built, low-power laptop with up to 2 years of battery life

Most laptop computers have battery life that’s measured in hours. Some offer “all-day” battery life. The PotatoP is a homemade laptop that should run for up to 2 years on a charge. The catch is that it won’t do many of the things you’d expect from a modern laptop. But developer Andreas Eriksen says the […]

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Megi’s PinePhone kernel updates bring battery life, performance improvements

Until recently one of the main things keeping the PinePhone from being a smartphone most people could use as a daily driver was battery life – when my PinePhone arrived in September, 2020 I couldn’t find an operating system that would offer more than a day or so of battery life while idle, let alone during […]

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Lilbits: Intel Tiger Lake-H reviews, Optane memory H20 coming soon, and Photoshop comes to Windows on ARM

Intel’s 11th-gen, 45-watt laptop processors have arrived, and the embargo on reviews lifted today. The good news is that the new Intel chips really do offer some of the best performance of any x86 processor in this class… when it comes to single-threaded performance. But when it comes to multi-threaded performance, AMD’s Ryzen 5000H series […]

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Google’s Pixel feature drop brings battery, bedtime, safety, and Assistant changes

Since late last year, every few months Google rolls out a handful of new features that are exclusive to Pixel-branded smartphones, and the latest Pixel feature drop is rolling out starting today. The update includes a handful of changes that could help extend a phone’s battery life, help you get a better night’s sleep, and […]

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New Nintendo Switch offers 2+ hours of extra battery life

A week after introducing a new Nintendo Switch Lite handheld game console (without removable controllers or a TV docking station), Nintendo has unveiled an update to the original Nintendo Switch. It’s the same as the original in most respects, but according to the Nintendo website, the new model will get 4.5 to 9 hours of […]

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Google tweaks Chrome background tab behavior for better battery life

Web browser makers have been making a point recently of accusing competitors’ software of draining your laptop battery. Now Google is making a change to its Chrome browser for desktop that should help users get longer battery life if they have a habit of keeping lots of browser tabs open in the background. Essentially, the […]

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Apple updates MacBook Pro software after Consumer Reports finds wildly variable battery life

A few weeks ago Consumer Reports announced that it could not recommend the latest MacBook Pro laptops, making them the first MacBook models that the product rating agency couldn’t give a Recommended rating. While the laptops performed well in most performance and display quality tests, the problem was battery life: it was wildly inconsistent. Sometimes […]

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Microsoft’s software-defined battery tech could lead to longer-lasting batteries

One way to develop longer-lasting batteries is to alter the chemical makeup of battery packs, and a number of researchers are looking for ways to do that. But a group of researchers at Microsoft are working on a way to make existing batteries last longer by using software. Software-defined batteries use a system of multiple batteries of different […]

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Stanford is working on a battery that can fully charge in a minute

One of the biggest complaints about tech specs for smart phones involves battery life. So it makes sense that there are teams of researchers trying to make better batteries. UC Berkeley is working on an energy storing battery called the “Supercapacitor” (I love the name), SolidEnergy is researching a longer-lasting battery for Google’s Project Ara […]