Have an old Game Boy, portable cassette or CD player, or other gadgets designed to run on alkaline batteries, but hate buying disposable batteries? One solution is to switch to rechargeables. Another? Switch to USB power. Of course, that second option is easier said than done. But a new Kickstarter campaign aims to make it […]
power
Posted inNews
Stackable power banks (for easy charging)
Need a little extra power to keep your smartphone, tablet, or other devices charged throughout the day? There are plenty of portable power packs on the market. But Koonhome’s power banks have one unusual feature: they’re stackable. This lets you recharge a group of batteries using a single power cable, and then just grab a […]
Posted inNews
Tiny windmills could power future smartphones (maybe)
Mobile device makers have a few options for improving battery life. They can cram huge batteries into phones and tablets. They can improve the efficiency of chips, wireless modules, and screens. Or they can wait for battery technology to get better… which could take a while (although there are some advances in battery tech on […]
Posted inNews
One day you may be able to charge a laptop with a USB cable
You can use USB cables to charge phones, tablets, media players, and all sorts of other gadgets. One day you may also be able to charge a laptop using a USB cable. The USB Implementer’s Forum has adopted a new standard for USB Power Delivery which supports delivering up to 100W via a USB cable. […]
Posted inNews
BlackBerry PlayBook OS update shortening battery life
While the PlayBook itself has received a mixed bag of praise and criticism, RIM has been lauded for making good on its promise to update the PlayBook OS early and often. It appears, however, that there has been an unwanted side effect to those updates: decreased battery life. PlayBook users have been reporting the […]
Posted inNews
ARM: WiFi wastes too much energy
Chip-designer ARM is known for making low power chips for smartphones and a growing number of tablets and mini-laptops. The goal is to offer enough power to provide decent performance without using so much energy that you run out of battery life after a few hours of use. But it turns out that some of […]
Posted inNews
Pixel Qi low power display power management demonstrated
OK, so you’ve probably heard of Pixel Qi’s display technology which offers the ability to toggle between a high power, full color more and a low power, high contrast mode that almost looks like an E Ink display. The advantages are the ability to see the screen outdoors, even in bright sunlight, and lower power […]
Posted inNews
Liliputing in Wired: The future of netbooks
Yesterday a reporter from Wired contacted me for comment on an article he was working on about the rise of the netbook. My quotes didn’t appear in the article when it first went live yesterday, but he later edited me in. The article provides a good overview of the current state of the netbook universe. […]