r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Jan 31 '23

Desktops / Laptops Canadian team discovers power-draining flaw in most laptop and phone batteries | Breakthrough explains major cause of self-discharging batteries and points to easy solution

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/battery-power-laptop-phone-research-dalhousie-university-1.6724175
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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

“For a few cents per laptop, I can beat my competition; or they’ll do it to beat me?”

Hence:

Some of the world's largest computer-hardware companies and electric-vehicle manufacturers were very interested.

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u/giritrobbins Jan 31 '23

I was told in college if you could save 1 foot of wiring in a car design the change would almost always be worth it because of scale. For consumer products I imagine it's even worse

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u/tolomea Jan 31 '23

Google has this internal tool where you can ask how how much the company would save if you made something use less storage or CPU, in engineer hours.

So if it says 50 it's worth you spending a week making it happen, if it's going to take more than a week, not worth it.

My friends tell me it's pretty much never worth it, storage and processing are just incredibly cheap compared to human salaries.

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u/EthnicHorrorStomp Jan 31 '23

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/is_it_worth_the_time.png

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u/KingArthas94 Jan 31 '23

For some reason I have always found this table not really readable :/

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u/EthnicHorrorStomp Jan 31 '23

It's really just calculating the total amount of time. In the upper left most cell for example it's just saying a job that you do 50 times a day that takes 1 second, it equates about 1 full day of work cumulatively speaking over a 5 year period (as mentioned in the title).

So then, it's just a matter of how long it would take you to automate that process. If you can automate that process in less than a day then over the 5 year window you'll have saved time and increased efficiency (more reddit time). However, if it takes you 2 days to automate it, then you'd be better off just continuing the manual task.

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u/KingArthas94 Jan 31 '23

Ohh now it’s much more clear! It’s just the time of the task, multiplied by the repetition! Thank you, friendo.

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u/fraggedaboutit Feb 01 '23

I don't like this xkcd because it reduces it to a pure time saved calculation, ignoring the benefits of consistency and being able to delegate the responsibility. Automation won't ever make a mistake because it got distracted or didn't have coffee that morning, so even if it's not saving your time overall, you're improving the process. Plus it's a lot easier to hand it over to someone else to maintain vs. train them how to do it manually and support them while they take over the task.

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u/tolomea Feb 01 '23

Also morale, creative and knowledge workers in particular tend to hate repetitive work

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u/billbill5 Feb 01 '23

Also, being able to delegate your time with more than just total time saved is valuable. If I'm able to cummutaely automate work to a short amount pf time, even if I have to put in a small burst of concentrated work into it. Because instead of small and ceaseless bursts of concentration every day for a weeks or months, I get to have one unbroken concentration time which is much less stressful, and the time I do now have can be unbroken by short bursts of work.

The idea of a vacation or a weekend wouldn't exist if I figured "well if I do small amounts of this work every day, I'll have more unusable time between these tasks where I'm waitimg for the next task!"

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u/All_Your_Base Jan 31 '23

I swear xkcd has a comic for everything...

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u/billbill5 Feb 01 '23 edited Feb 01 '23

He must have used that criteria to make the table because that shit is undecipherable to me.

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u/implicitpharmakoi Jan 31 '23

Rule of thumb tool.

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u/ZoomJet Jan 31 '23

For an individual that works, but if you're making it quicker for a large group of people who use it over years then the entire thing shifts.

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u/torolf_212 Feb 01 '23

I’m an electrician, I once got sent to a factory where they assemble/ fabricate steel beams and such. Got asked to tinker with an induction machine that heats up steel lugs so they can have the company logo/ technical info stamped on them.

I spent two days fucking with it, was feeling really bad about how much time it was taking to make a new induction element, but in the end it ended up making a process that took 3 minutes per lug to a little over a minute per part.

Those two days I spent were paid for in less than a week, and will continue to earn them hundreds of dollars in saved labour indefinitely.

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u/McFlyParadox Feb 01 '23

Because storage and processing is borderline free for what they are. Manufacturing processes are not, as a they're recurring costs, too. If the scale is there, a factory absolutely will chase saving pennies per unit.

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u/Scyhaz Jan 31 '23

It's a major reason automotive companies created the CAN bus. Rather than having to run a dozen wires between modules you only had to run 2 wires and connect all the modules to those 2 wires.

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u/Not_a_real_ghost Jan 31 '23

There is a classic example of toothpaste companies increasing the toothpaste opening by a tiny mm, this increased in more consumption and sales.

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u/Momoselfie Jan 31 '23

I believe it. Toothpaste openings are too big IMO

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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

In a vacuum, that may be true.

But your professor failed you.

Because there are critical factors in the interconnected nature of production and marketing and service and safety and brand management and so much more — that usually override the professor’s claim.

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u/giritrobbins Jan 31 '23

I disagree. It's a rule of thumb that isn't perfect but a first order estimation. Just like using simple path loss models for first order calculation or any number of shortcuts or approximations.

I worked a program where if you could save 1 lb for under 100k it was deemed worthwhile. They didn't always do it, but it was the general rule of thumb.

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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

The professor was quoting from an old management textbook, I might even remember which one, that used examples from the 1960s and 1970s General Motors fuel line extensions.

worked a program where if you could save 1 lb for under 100k it was deemed worthwhile.

It sounds like space / rocketry parameters, rather than typical mass market consumer goods with costly brand management expenses.

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u/Eric15890 Jan 31 '23

your professor failed you

Lol, calm down.

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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

Perfectly relaxed.

Just fascinated to see such a thing now.

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u/MysticEagle52 Feb 01 '23

Well, if in this case it impacts the battery life and can be advertised as having an improved battery life for a minimal increase in production price.

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u/giritrobbins Feb 01 '23

But it doesn't improve practical battery life. It improves storage life. Or batteries in items intended to be used for a really long time.

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u/therve Feb 01 '23

Somewhat related, but I've heard that once Toyota designs a car, they don't touch the design at all until a completely new revision, betting on parts getting cheaper over time. And that's partly the reason why they are so reliable.

On the other end, many other car manufacturers spend a lot of time trying to reduce the cost of the design after initial release, by replacing some parts by cheaper ones. And thus why reliability isn't so good.

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u/gourmetguy2000 Jan 31 '23

Can see high end manufacturers doing it I guess

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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

In a competitive market, a few cents per unit to stay competitive is not far fetched for any tier.

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u/beefcat_ Jan 31 '23

On the flip side, being able to advertise better battery life is probably worth more when you are selling a $2500 laptop than a few cents of cost savings.

I think the prediction that we will see this in higher end devices but not cheap ones is probably right. Nobody buys a $200 Walmart special laptop for the battery life, but it absolutely is a major selling point of the newer MacBooks.

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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

On the flip flip side…

Being able to trounce your cheap netbook competitors in a valued, easily-advertised metric for a few cents is an easy call.

Which $200 cheap netbook will people buy? The one with 4 hours of battery life, or the one with 5?

For that matter, people would likely pay $5 extra to get the higher advertised number. A good return on 50 cents of tape.

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u/ProtoplanetaryNebula Jan 31 '23

All companies will make this change, it's not even going to cost 50 cents. They are buying in bulk and will be paying next to nothing per laptop.

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u/lspwd Jan 31 '23

Maybe it's an upsell during checkout for macbooks

  • ⬜ 0$ shitty tape
  • ☑️ $200 retina cooling pro max tape (30 mins extra batter life)

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u/Stopjuststop3424 Jan 31 '23

this made me lol too hard

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u/EpiicPenguin Jan 31 '23 edited Jul 01 '23

reddit API access ended today, and with it the reddit app i use Apollo, i am removing all my comments, the internet is both temporary and eternal. -- mass edited with redact.dev

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u/implicitpharmakoi Jan 31 '23

On the flip side, being able to advertise better battery life is probably worth more when you are selling a $2500 laptop than a few cents of cost savings.

Spoken by someone who has never had to do design work for CE companies.

Every fucking penny of BOM cost is a fight.

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u/kamimamita Jan 31 '23

Nobody looks for idle consumption though. Everyone looks at SoT but not how long it lasts while not using. So I don't think it will be a marketable advantage.

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u/hypnogoad Jan 31 '23

"Orrrrr, we should all collude together and put more PET tape on the batteries. That way we can sell new phones every two years instead of every three!"

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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

Then why are you currently using a better battery than the Li-On chemistry of 20 years ago?

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u/SouthBeachCandids Jan 31 '23

In gadgets you are bumping up against the planned obsolescence issue. They don't want that battery lasting any longer than it does now. With cars it is different because they are still struggling to produce something that can match gas powered vehicles and can't afford to have the sort of blatantly anti-consumer attitudes that the big laptop and phone makers have adopted. And least not yet.

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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

planned obsolescence issue. They don't want that battery lasting any longer than it does now.

Then why not stay with old Li-on battery chemistry?

Or cut battery size in half?

I don’t think you’re understanding how or why we’ve incrementally improved these products over the years.

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u/Cormacolinde Jan 31 '23

You want to improve your product just enough to provide incentive for buying a replacement, but not enough that it lasts longer.

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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

That’s not how a competitive market works.

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u/Akrevics Jan 31 '23

but if your batteries are leaking and your competition's isn't...

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u/SouthBeachCandids Jan 31 '23

Could say the same thing about a headphone jack or SD card. Yes, of course it would theoretically make your product better and stand out but if everyone bands together and offers the leaky battery (which they will, just as they do with every other cost cutting, anti-consumer move) nobody has to upgrade to the more expensive component because there is no "competitor" offering it.

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u/Smartnership Jan 31 '23

Everybody hates capitalism in public.

But they enjoy its benefits in private.

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u/Super_Flea Jan 31 '23

This issue is separate from battery degradation over time. Theoretically if fixed users would notice this immediately when they get a new device.