battery

Android devices may soon tell users when their phone is starting to degrade. It's a feature already found in phones. The feature is not about the percentage of charge the battery has, which is easy to find in Android settings and can be shown ... permanently on the screen. Instead, it's about battery health. It's described by Google as the "estimated percentage of charge the battery can currently hold compared to when it was new." That's not necessarily as straightforward as it might seem: battery life doesn't necessarily degrade at a consistent rate. A rule of thumb, the battery should retain at ... (view more)

Apple has issued a warning about safely charging iPhones. However, reports in which the company said users should never charge their phone while they sleep are incorrect. At least one newspaper reported the story with the headline "Why you shouldn't ... charge your iPhone while you sleep." Another site used the slightly more accurate but still potentially misleading "Apple warns people should never sleep next to their phone while its charging." From those headlines you might think Apple is making a surprisingly open revelation about handsets spontaneously combusting and taking out everything in a ... (view more)

Phone manufacturers may soon have to offer replaceable batteries in handsets. The rules have been approved by European politicians but could create enough hassle for manufacturers that they follow the measures worldwide. The change, approved ... overwhelmingly by the European Parliament, is part of an overall package to reduce the environmental impact of batteries. Other measures include minimum requirements for the levels of recycled material in new batteries along with the amount of material that can be recovered when the batteries go to waste. The precise wording has yet to be finalized, but ... (view more)

Chrome users will soon have two new modes that could significantly increase performance and battery life. The Energy Saver and Energy Saver modes are the first major changes since users of Windows 8 and earlier editions lost access to Chrome ... updates. While Google probably won't acknowledge things quite so bluntly, the new modes are an attempt to solve one of the most frequent complaints about the widely used browser. Many users find having too many tabs open at once means Chrome quickly starts using a lot of system memory. This can slow performance and even increase battery use on laptops. ( ... (view more)

Phone manufacturers may be forced to make batteries easily removable. The proposed European rule could have worldwide consequences. Were the rules to become law, they would affect 27 countries that are members of the European Parliament. For global ... manufacturers, most notably Apple, that could mean such a significant change to their handset design that they find it simpler to replicate it in all markets. Politicians from the European Parliament and the technology ministers from each country have agreed to the changes in principle. They'll now have to go through the lawmaking process before ... (view more)

Dell says its computers will soon be able to use two internet connections at once. Supposedly this will significantly increase speeds and reduce glitches, but the details are somewhat vague. It's part of a series of features packaged as Dell ... Optimizer aimed particularly at people using laptops for work while at home or on the move. They include an onlooker detection that appears to use the webcam to spot when somebody could be looking over the user's shoulder. Depending on the settings, the screen can then lock or blur. Another feature uses a combination of user settings and automated ... (view more)

A new charging technology could completely fill a phone battery in under 10 minutes. Or at least that's what its developers say. Chinese company Oppo claims that not only can it achieve the super-speed charge, but it does so without damaging the ... battery or shortening its lifespan. The company demonstrated the technology at Mobile World Congress, an annual showcase for the cellphone industry in Barcelona. While not a household name, Oppo is actually the world's fourth biggest company when it comes to sales, behind only Samsung, Apple and Huawei. The basics of what it calls SuperVooc charging ... (view more)

Google is experimenting with a way to make Chrome use less power when a laptop battery is starting to run out. But it will rely on website owners to make it happen. The test is of a "Battery-Savings Meta Tag" which can be added to a website's code ... and will include battery saving recommendations specific to that site. These would then kick in whenever the computer is at a particular battery level. The idea is to avoid having Chrome itself simply take blanket measures that might not be appropriate for all websites. Video Frame Rate Lowered One of the examples Google gives is for a tag to say ... (view more)

Apple is to compensate customers after claims it intentionally slowed down old iPhones to make people more likely to upgrade. Each person eligible in the class action lawsuit will get around $25, but Apple isn't formally admitting any wrongdoing. ... Back in 2017 Apple admitted it had intentionally slowed down the performance of old iPhones through a software update. However, it denied this was a marketing move and instead said it was a necessary step to extend the lifespan of ageing batteries of older iPhones . Specifically it said sudden spikes in processor demand could cause older batteries to ... (view more)

The Chrome browser may soon put less drain on processors and battery life in Windows 10. Perhaps surprisingly, that's because of changes made by Microsoft rather than Google. The relevant tweaks were discovered by Microsoft as part of its work to ... rebuild the Edge browser that comes with Windows 10. Originally it ran on Microsoft code, but the new version of Edge is now based on Chromium. For those unaware, Chromium is an open source project, which is the basis of Google's Chrome browser. Microsoft found one cause of battery drain was disk caching during online video playback. In simple terms ... (view more)