Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by djent 3998 days ago
I feel like mobile developers and the creators of the hardware have given up on heavy optimization to work on minimal hardware and instead just gone with more expensive, top of the line hardware so they can continue current programming practices.
1 comments
maccard 3998 days ago
I work on console targeted projects, we still have to optimise for very tight hardware constraints!
link
djent 3998 days ago
The reality is that the phones of today are as powerful or more so than the laptops of yesterday.
link
jeremiep 3998 days ago
Yet my phone battery used to last a week and now it doesn't even last a day. Mobile CPUs may be able to handle all that bloated code fast enough, but not long enough.
link
maccard 3998 days ago
When your phone battery lasted a week, what did you do on your phone, compared to what you do on it now? If I leave my laptop on standby the battery lasts at least 3-4 days, but if I use it continuously it lasts under 7 hours. Similarly with my smartphone, if I leave it on standby I get 2-3 days, but with "normal" usage - (moderate browsing, emails, texts, phonecalls) I have to charge it either daily or every other day.
link
simoncion 3997 days ago
I'm not the OP, but when my feature phone battery lasted a week, I made some phone calls every day or two, and used the phone as a daily alarm clock.

If Google Play Services decides to not burn all of my battery in busy waiting or whatever, and if I make zero phone calls and have a daily alarm, my smartphone battery will last between two and three days. When my phone was new and I was commuting with it, I would typically get between eight and ten hours on a charge.

I would happily double the thickness of any modern non-ruggedized smartphone in order to double its battery life.

link
maccard 3996 days ago
> When my phone was new and I was commuting with it, I would typically get between eight and ten hours on a charge.

Sounds like you got a dud phone.

but being serious, It's one of the trade offs of modern smart phones. THey're designed to last roughly a day of usage. If you use them like you used your old phone, you'd get 2-3 days out of them, but then you might aswell just run with an Alcatel[0] and get the super long battery life.

[0]: https://www.o2.co.uk/shop/phones/alcatel/1040/#contractType=...

link