Mobile device battery life

[Garrett]

Just offloading, hope you guys will forgive me..

I'm in the market for a new Netbook/Laptop & after looking at what must be every single half decent device out there, am dismayed to learn that none offer, what to me would be a reasonable battery life (10+ hrs) and that's just with basic usage.. any gaming/multimedia etc & you better be planning on visiting a power point very soon.

Is this ever likely to improve with the (Lithium-ion?) batteries most of these devices use or is the 6-7 hour average the limit until something better comes along?

I appreciate there's a lot of variables that have a significant impact on battery life.. OS, component power draw, the kind of screen & it's brightness/resolution etc.

 

[PokeParadox]

Yup most only give you idle time, unfortunately.

 

[EssoAir]

If you get a 2013 Macbook Pro you can get 10hrs


Its an intel PC so it can run Windows or any Distro built for it, but im not sure if that would change the battery life

 

[kuru]

Not on the easily affordable side either, but Lenovo also offers laptops with extended batteries as acessory, they claim 24hrs, can't say how those fare with heavy usage.

 

[Exophase]

Geez, it wasn't very long ago that 2-3 hour battery life was more or less standard and the push towards 4 hours was a big deal.. now 6-7 is too low.. people sure are spoiled

Something Haswell-based could give you around the battery life you're looking for for light usage. If that's not enough you can wait for something Silvermont-based..

 

[SNESFAN]

My wifes computer just bit the dust and im in the market for an under $500 laptop and I have to say the jump from 4hrs max to 6-7 avg is quite shocking.

 

[knightron]

If you get a 2013 Macbook Pro you can get 10hrs


Its an intel PC so it can run Windows or any Distro built for it, but im not sure if that would change the battery life

Be careful with this. OSX is heavily optimized for the hardware. I own a 2010 macbook pro and triboot OSX, Windows 7, and Debian Wheezy. When i bought it, it was advertised at 7 hours, but i get about 5 hours with OS X, Windows 2.5 hours, and Linux 3.25 hours.

My primary laptop is a Thinkpad X220, i get about 5.5 hours on Linux with it. I think i get a little more on Windows 7, but i don't use Windows enough to remember.

I will add also, if you're a Linux user, i've recently left kde, and i've observed that my battery life has gone up, so kde = less battery life (in my experience)