Centrino and Battery Life

If all of this sounds a little familiar, you may remember similar issues arising between Wi-Fi and Bluetooth; it’s much the same effect. Another advantage to this new hybrid controller is that certain shared components of both network types (antennas for example) need no longer be split.

Echo Peak will be the same size as the current Wi-Fi n controller and will be available in both Minicard and reduced Minicard formats. However, you should probably be careful if you’re hoping to bag one, like the current Wi-Fi n controller (4965 AGN), Echo Peak will be optional. Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Panasonic and Toshiba have already agreed to use this controller on selected models.

Intel took advantage of this presentation to show an interesting graph showing the results of an investigation of the expectations of buyers when looking for new laptops. Curiously enough, the number one criteria is power consumption, with battery life ranked third, behind data protection. This is a little surprising; particularly given the fact that a laptop with the lowest power consumption possible will be neutered by a poor battery. The two go hand in hand, so the separation seems unusual.

What’s even more surprising is the battery life over the course of the Centrino’s lifetime, which has kept increasing (+40 %) since 2005 according to Intel. This is based on tests with a Thinkpad T using identical batteries.

The impressive statistics are, no doubt, particular to this case, as we can confirm. With identical batteries, the evolutions of the Centrino have always brought a slight decrease in battery life in tests we’ve carried out (which confirms the increase being notably due to the processors’ TDP and the chipsets). Keep in mind that manufacturers have a tendency to always decrease the number of cells and the capacity of their batteries (which makes them less costly, lighter, and takes up less volume).

Only the Penryn was mentioned with regard to the supposed improvements in battery life to come with the Montevina. The latter would see its tension decreased while at rest, but also its entire cache deactivated and not provided with power. Intel told us on the side that this would not be the case with the Merom. This is contrary to what we had believed until now.