Toshiba’s new Kira Ultrabook promises 22 hours of use on a single charge

Toshiba's new Kira Ultrabook promises 22 hours on a single charge

We praised Toshiba’s last flagship Ultrabook for its brilliant screen and speedy boot-up time, but the company’s newest Kirabook has a notable new feature — an estimated 22 hours of battery life. Intel’s new Haswell chips may have shifted our expectations of what we expect laptops can deliver battery-wise, but almost running a whole day remains an impressive feat. That’s Toshiba’s claim for its new Dynabook KIRA V654, which sidesteps touch compatibility on its 13-inch 1,366 x 768 resolution screen to add to the battery savings and weighs in at just 1.12kg. Alongside an additional high-resolution model (2,560 x 1,440), if you simply must have swipeable screens on your Windows 8 machine, there’s also the similarly-sized Dynabook Kira V834, although that model will only manage a paltry 14 hours of work and / or play. (We kid.)

The two machines will launch in Japan on 20th November, with the touch-capable V834 starting at 153,000 yen ($1,530), while the endurance-specialized V634 will start at 144,000 yen (roughly $1,446). As is often the way with these made-in-Japan PCs, there’s no word on whether the rest of the world will get to see either model yet, but we’ll let you know if we hear anything from Toshiba.

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Via: Engadget Japanese

Source: Toshiba

Microsoft says IE10 owns the coveted ‘most energy efficient browser’ title

Microsoft says IE10 is more energy efficient than Chrome or Firefox Yes, energy efficient

Ever been concerned about the energy consumption of your web browser? Us neither, but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from ballyhooing that stat to sway you in favor of Internet Explorer. According to the latest tests it commissioned from Fraunhofer USA, IE10 uses up to 18 percent less power in browsing, Flash and HTML5 tasks than its main rivals, Chrome and Firefox. The company claims that translates into more than just boon for your battery life. Redmond goes so far as to say that if every single Chrome and Firefox user switched to IE10, it would save enough energy to power over 10,000 US homes for a year (translation: Google and Mozilla are hurting the Earth). We can’t and won’t vouch for the authenticity of that statement, but we do know that’s a lot of users we’re talking about.

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Via: Techcrunch

Source: Microsoft

Intel: Haswell will boost laptop battery life by 50 percent

Intel Haswell will boost battery life in laptops by 50 percent

When Intel launched Haswell, it promised a generational leap in battery life, and now the chip giant’s talking numbers to back that up. Architecture Group VP Rani Borkar said that laptops packing the chipset should get 50 percent more battery life than current Ivy Bridge models and go up to 20 times longer in standby or idle mode — without any cost to performance. She said that lower power requirements will be one factor in the drop in consumption, but an all-new architecture including a power management chip will also help reduce the energy draw. We’ll have to see whether that encouraging piece of news will help the moribund PC notebook market pick up lost ground to tablets, or whether companies will just keep blurring the line.

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Source: Computerworld

NTT DoCoMo’s summer mobile lineup is all about battery life, colors and LTE

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While the semi-annual parade of new smartphone models at NTT DoCoMo often reveals some unexpected devices, this summer it had a bumper crop: we’ve already seen the new Sony Xperia A, Sharp’s Aquos Phone Zeta and Aquos Pad SH-08E plus a Galaxy S4 in “arctic blue.” Seven more phones round out the lineup and NTT DoCoMo is trumpeting 2,100 mAh minimum batteries, LTE, NFC and quad-core processors for the entire gamut. Other standout models include Fujitsu’s 5.2-inch, 1080P Arrows NX F-06E, a model with a 16-megapixel camera you’ll likely never see stateside, Panasonic’s Eluga V P-06D with a 4.7-inch 1080P screen and a whopping 2,600 mAh battery, and Disney Mobile’s F-07D, which should be an endurance wonder with a 720P screen and 2,600mAh cell. Naturally, there’s a rainbow of new hues for most of the models, which will roll out over the summer in Japan — click the source link PDF for detailed specs or check the PR after the jump.

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Source: NTT DoCoMo (PDF)

How the iPhone 5 got its ‘insanely great’ A6 processor

How the iPhone 5 got its 'insanely great' A6 processor It’s hard not to be impressed by the A6 engine in the new iPhone 5, since it’s now proven to deliver a double-shot of great performance and class-leading battery life. But silicon stories like that don’t happen over night or even over the course of a year — in fact, analyst Linley Gwennap has traced the origins of the A6 all the way back to 2008, when Steve Jobs purchased processor design company P.A. Semi and set one of its teams to work on creating something “insanely great” for mobile devices.

Although Apple is steadfastly secretive about its components, Gwennap’s history of the A6 (linked below) is both plausible and a straight-up good read for anyone interested in the more fundamental aspects of their gadgets. Whereas the A5 processor stuck closely to ARM’s Cortex-A9 design, Gwennap is convinced — just like Anandtech is –that the A6 treads a very different path: it’s still based on ARM’s architecture and it’s likely fabricated by Samsung using a cutting-edge 32nm process, but it’s an in-house vision of what a mobile chip should be. It’s the culmination of four years of hard work and perhaps half a billion dollars of investment.

That’s not to say it’s the most powerful chip out there, or even the chip most tailored to its host device — after all, Samsung also designs great chips for some of its own smartphones. Indeed, Gwennap says that the A6 is probably a dual-core processor that is no more complex than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 (let alone the S4 Pro) or the forthcoming generation of Cortex-A15 chips, while its clock speed could be as low as 1.2GHz — versus a 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos in the Note II and even a 2GHz Intel chip in Motorola’s new RAZR i. However, Gwennap predicted that even if the A6 falls short of its rivals “in raw CPU performance,” it’d make up for it in terms of low power consumption — which is precisely what we’ve confirmed in our review.

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How the iPhone 5 got its ‘insanely great’ A6 processor originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Sep 2012 06:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink CNET  |  sourceThe Linley Group  | Email this | Comments

Editorial: Physics and politics stand in the way of true mobile

Editorial Physics and politics stand in the way of true mobile

Progress is lumpy. The future is attained in a series of epochal strides, each followed by a lot of relatively inconsequential shuffling forward. The invention of the internet (and especially the consumer-friendly web) was a rare giant step that motivated immense adoption of computers and digital lifestyles. A global marketplace of online citizens spawned gadgets, software apps, corporate gold-rushing and other feverish shuffling.

Even with the opulent gadgetry we admire and enjoy, the whole expanding tech bubble seems to be reaching for something beyond itself. The incremental improvements of personal technology don’t thrust into the future as much as push against constraining walls of the present. Sharper screens and thinner computers are delightful results of corporate development cycles. But we are tethered to the present, which one day will seem primitive in retrospect, by two unglamorous bridles: power and connectivity.

Continue reading Editorial: Physics and politics stand in the way of true mobile

Editorial: Physics and politics stand in the way of true mobile originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Sep 2012 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nyko Power Grip for PlayStation Vita review: a $25 accessory that promises to double your battery life

DNP  Nyko Power Grip for PlayStation Vita Review twice the playtime and twice the bulk

Gaming accessories come in all shapes and sizes — replacement controllers, portable console suitcases, specialized mice, control augmenting nubs, you name it. Whatever your niche, you can bet there’s a product out there to fill it. Nyko, in particular, has made a bit of a habit of fulfilling a particular need: manufacturing third-party battery accessories for all those short-lived handhelds. The outfit has such a solid track record in the category, in fact, that we had little doubt its PlayStation Vita Power Grip ($25) would live up to its life-giving hype — but we decided to put it to the test all the same.

Continue reading Nyko Power Grip for PlayStation Vita review: a $25 accessory that promises to double your battery life

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Nyko Power Grip for PlayStation Vita review: a $25 accessory that promises to double your battery life originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Aug 2012 14:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ford, GE and University of Michigan team up on sensor to track EV battery life, keep us on the road

Ford Focus Electric hands-on

Believe it or not, EV battery life is still something of a Pandora’s Box, even for automakers: they can tell you the battery pack’s current and voltage, but not how it’s really performing under pressure. Ford, GE and the University of Michigan are uniting to unlock that mystery through a new ARPA-E project. In its role, GE is developing a minuscule sensor array that will track the nuances of battery cells that existing technology misses; it will promptly hand the baton to researchers at the University of Michigan, who plan to both prove that GE’s data is on the mark as well as develop tricks for predicting behavior. Ford handles the last mile, almost literally: it’s planning to fit the GE sensor technology to one of its cars and test in a more realistic environment. Before you fantasize about knowing the lifespan of your Focus Electric’s battery down to the minute, however, the new alliance is stressing that it’s only just getting started — there’s another three years and $3.1 million to go before the project wraps up. If all goes according to plan, though, we’ll have electric cars and plug-in hybrids that can not only tell when they’ve seen better days but can eke out extra miles through smarter battery designs.

Continue reading Ford, GE and University of Michigan team up on sensor to track EV battery life, keep us on the road

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Ford, GE and University of Michigan team up on sensor to track EV battery life, keep us on the road originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 05 Aug 2012 12:50:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Poll: Is Mountain Lion devouring your Mac’s battery life?

Poll Is Mountain Lion devouring your Mac's battery life

We’ve seen plenty of users report that Apple’s latest OS, Mountain Lion, has caused a massive drop in battery life. While we haven’t been able to confirm any decrease in longevity with our own OS 10.8 machines, which include previous generation MacBook Pros and the company’s latest Retina model, it’s clear that some of you who were able to get the operating system downloaded and installed have experienced some not-so-favorable side effects with your Pros and MacBook Airs. While there are plenty of theories, there has yet to be a fix, though Apple is reportedly investigating the issue. This isn’t the first time users have reported decreased battery life after an OS update, with a lengthy support thread popping up after Lion’s release last year. So, how has the upgrade affected you? Sound off in the poll below to let us know.

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Poll: Is Mountain Lion devouring your Mac’s battery life? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 03 Aug 2012 14:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Forbes, ArsTechnica  |  sourceApple Discussions (Mountain Lion)  | Email this | Comments