Replying to Avatar Jordan

Why are phone batteries not improving much?

FaceTime has been around for over a decade, and it seems like it eats the same amount of battery today as it did back then.

I know performance improvements consume more battery, but can’t imagine the “performance” has improved on something as simple as FaceTime over the past 10 years.
Avatar
Scale Bar 1y ago

Materials science evolves incrementally and more slowly than software. But its impact is long lasting and ubiquitous. Also, we can’t resist more software features, sensors or pixels.

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Avatar
Jordan 1y ago

Love it! Thanks 🙏

Avatar
Scale Bar 1y ago

🧡 Put differently, materials science is analogous to bitcoin - it operates in a way that's tethered to the physical world, with real constraints, and requires lots and lots of trade-offs. Software (broadly speaking) is like fiat - there's not cost to replicating it, and no limit to how it could be expanded in terms of features and bloat.