Smart Watch’s Display Is Its ‘Big Battery-Sucking Component,’ Says Android Wear Point Man
A smart watch’s display is its “big battery-sucking component,” consuming up to a third of battery life when fully charged, Sidney Chang, who heads Android Wear business development at Google, told us at last week’s Display Week conference in San…
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Jose (see 1506040024). That’s why Google is in constant “conversations” with “all the best SoCs in the world” about “battery optimization” in a smart watch, Chang said of systems-on-a-chip suppliers. “But the most bang for the buck is going to come from the display.” In the smart watch “use case” of health and wellness, “we certainly need battery life there” to support functionality such as recording “heart rate on a constant basis,” he said. Though Chang is personally fascinated by the research into solar and other "energy harvesting" techniques and their possible implications for smart watch power management, he’s concerned they “don’t quite generate the power that’s needed on a wattage basis these days,” he said. “But I’m optimistic” because battery life in smart watches “is something that the entire consumer electronics industry would love to solve,” he said. “Watches are something that lives in the real world, so having something that gets a lot of sun exposure is something that the watch has something of a natural attribute towards.”