Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Insufficient Battery Life is Just a Fact of Life

Kaufman Bros. equity analyst Shaw Wu has been claiming that the new Research in Motion PlayBook has battery life issues. Wu says he would be “very surprised if PlayBook matches anywhere near the battery life of the iPad at 10 hours unless it uses a larger battery.”

Some of the issues are application related, as has been the case for other categories of devices, such as smartphones.

The PlayBook supports Flash, and Flash is a resource hog, says Wu. “As seen in recent tests for the new MacBook Air, use of Flash can cut battery life in half," he says.

QNX, the operating system on which PlayBook is to run, wasn’t designed for it full mobile use. It was intended for devices drawing power from a wall socket or car battery.

RIM’s implementation of power management is not as well-integrated as that of its rivals–particularly Apple, whose homegrown A4 system-on-chip enables the company to deliver superior battery life, he argues.

To be sure, longish battery life is always a plus for any mobile device. On the other hand, most smartphone users will tell you that if they actually use their smartphones for web-based apps, battery life goes way down. Sure, you can restrict your usage to voice and text only, but then what's the point of having a smartphone?

There might be issues that RIM has to work on. Still, even under the best of conditions, a smartphone is going to run through its charge quickly if much web activity occurs. Tablets have a larger form factor, so can handle a bigger battery. But less than optimal battery life just comes with the territory.

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