Powerful change part 2: reducing the power demands of mobile devices

Consumers expect their mobile devices to be small and light, have a decent battery lifetime, and still be powerful enough to run all their desired applications. The need to satisfy such consumer demands has driven mobile-device manufacturers to make products (such as PDAs and cell phones) that match these needs. However, this inevitably requires tradeoffs. Building smaller, lighter devices requires sacrificing the device´s battery capacity because battery technology is still fairly dense and heavy, and contributes most of a mobile device´s size and weight. But, mobile devices with the required resources to run useful desktop applications need additional battery power to run those resources for a reasonable length of time. Because the tension facing manufacturers appears to be in deciding the battery-weight and battery-performance tradeoffs, the solution seems to lie in finding ways to increase a mobile device´s battery lifetime.