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Comment by vinceguidry | Hacker News Reader

The company that wins the jackpot on this isn't going to be the one with the most advanced batteries. It's going to be the company that figures out how to cut platform bloat down to a reasonable size, reducing energy consumption by an order of magnitude.

They're also going to have to figure out ways to keep third-party apps from undoing their hard work.

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> It's going to be the company that figures out how to cut platform bloat down to a reasonable size, reducing energy consumption by an order of magnitude.

I'd say there is evidence for your argument; there is one company trying to play that game on the smartwatch industry: Pebble. Their watches can run for a much longer time than the competition because they took your approach: lean and basic. And they've been doing well, holding on against very strong contenders (Google, Asus, Samsung, LG).

My Android Wear watch (LG watch) typically runs for 1-2 days with a battery charge. I can get my Pebble running for even 17 days. It is very far from perfect, but for me is the minimum acceptable.

Apple's pretty good at that - the last time I looked at the ifixit teardowns their batteries were 30-40% smaller than the competition, and battery life was comparable. But they use that advantage not to increase usable battery life but to decrease device size.

I doubt "order of magnitude" is going to happen barring some revolutionary display technology.

You can get to order of magnitude with a combination of getting the software right and using the best battery available. After all, it's not like the company on this path is going to use crappy batteries, they'll use the best available like everyone else.

That only gets you so far. You can extend your standby time enormously that way, but people want to actually use their devices. I don't see a way to attain an order of magnitude improvement on the energy consumption of web browsing just by cutting bloat. Ultimately you still have to emit lots of photons to communicate with the user and the network.

My wife just discovered that if she puts her phone in airplane mode when playing solitaire it doesn't overheat and her battery lasts longer. This app should be the poster boy for being lightweight and efficient, but is instead used to showcase an advertising network. Who is the actual user here? Everything that doesn't improve the experience of playing solitaire is bloat in this case. There are countless more examples.

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