Very interesting!
Content providers however haven't really done much. Do you think app and web developers give much thought to battery life when they make their products? If they ever optimize it's for reasons such as responsiveness (which drives customers away if it's poor), and battery life is at best a sideeffect.
I'm sure the average website of 10/20 years ago uses less resources, and by extension power than the current average website.
I suppose you could argue we do more with each unit of power, I would contend most of that has been wasted on non core frivolities that aren't worth the cost though.
First, you can't really know how various things are implemented in hardware. Something that saves power on one machine will increase power usage on another. This would be a big step backwards in terms of abstraction.
Second, and more important IMO, is that it's just not our job. Hardware people should make efficient hardware, and software people should make efficient software. The meaning of efficient depends on the context.
Much software doesn’t need to be efficient in design, just efficient in terms of developer time. But if power consumption is a consideration, making the software itself more efficient in its design (if not implementation details) becomes more of a requirement.
And, finally, there’s always people writing embedded/firmware. The line between software and hardware is blurry.
I also wonder if by optimizing for some combination of battery life, battery size, device size, Cost, QPS required, Sensors on-board we'll end up with something that has interesting monitoring capabilities in very remote regions.