Nokia/WinMobile app boasts 30% additional battery life

With the increasing battery consumption by smartphone due to a wide range of connections and other power-heavy features, low battery life is becoming an increasingly large problem coupled with currently weak battery technology. Hardware changes have become the most common solution, ranging from just buying a ton of chargers for every room of your house to just buying additional, and perhaps larger batteries, but software solutions are becoming more popular and more common. UK developer Ravensoft is working on a battery extender application for the Nokia Ovi and Windows Mobile platforms that boats as much as 30% extra battery life.

How does it work? Apparently it functions in much the same was as power management on modern laptops, you select a profile for battery consumption and it will manage your settings automatically. I have toyed with similar applications in the past, with mixed results, they usually only improve battery life at the cost of functionality and only function under fairly rigid conditions, a fluid solution has yet to be fully implemented, but 30% seems to be a very substantial upgrade if it can live up to that number. Unfortunately, it carries a pretty hefty price tag of $14.99, significantly more expensive than most other power saving applications on other application platforms, so let’s hope it can live up to that price tag.  Both the Nokia and Windows Mobile versions should be available later this year, no firm release dates yet.

The real question is: why haven’t the manufactures and developers of these devices implemented their own power saving features yet? Sure, hardware manufactures now shop around for low power consumption hardware these days, but the software side is still sorely neglected, the vast majority of devices still have no power management tools at all, you have to change all the options to conserve power manually. Sure, applications help, but first party developers would surely be better to implement better tools to conserve and manage power consumption due to better integration. So is s this simply a lack of caring, a lack or time to develop proper bundled software, or an endorsement of third (and first) party accessories?

-Read more about the app here.