Battery technology is progressing at a snail’s pace, and in order to make up for this, companies that develop the hardware and software that power your mobile devices have come up with some brilliant ways to reduce power consumption while still improving performance. One of the ways Microsoft is trying to reduce power consumption is by controlling batteries with software, rather than hardware, which allows machine learning to be used. With machine learning, your device will be able to understand your habits and tweak itself in order to maximize power efficiency and save battery life.
Desperately trying to find a power outlet to charge your laptop in the middle of a meeting or presentation may soon be a thing of the past. Instead of waiting for the next breakthrough in battery technology, researchers at Microsoft are working on a way to improve battery stamina using existing technologies. This means that a future in which your dead laptop battery could quickly charge up in time for your next meeting, or having a laptop maintain enough battery life to last you through a transAtlantic flight, may be ready sooner than you think. To create this perfect battery, Microsoft is using a variety of different types of battery, machine learning and smart software. Battery advances have not kept pace with improvements in computing components, such as faster processors, higher resolution displays and faster wireless speeds. Today, battery charging on a laptop is controlled by hardware rather than the operating system, which means that it is not as efficient. Hardware alone cannot determine, for example, how a user is using their laptop and in what context or setting to give the proper charge needed.
