Race to yield to the os as soon as you can.
Minimize data movement. Use efficient algorithms. Be mindful of abstraction overhead, etc.
I assume this is a typo for 4.3", because PSP is definitely 16:9 and photos of the Evercade look to be as well.
No it isn't.
Also, apples to apples isn't even close. Even just the gameboy vs gameboy color ignores that they used different batteries. Also rechargable vs not.
I had a Gameboy and the move to rechargable batteries is a GOD send. I don't need battery-life as much as I needed to not be spending $$$ to play my games.
The rest is just a bunch of BS anecdata that definitely does not tell the story the author wants it to tell. The chart is sorted by battery life rather than date which really muddies the picture. Looking at the dates I don't see "the decline of battery life" but rather "battery life is highly variable but devices are getting more efficient as they get more powerful".
Progress in the last 4 years (through mid-2025) shows this post has aged poorly even if the premise had been supported by the data. Many handhelds gaming devices get over 6 hours continuous play, and several like the Odin 2 have larger batteries and can get 10-12 hours easily. And they can be recharged from typical USB chargers.
If I had to describe it loosely, we've had 3 "eras" of battery-powered computing:
- Relatively simple devices (like the Gameboy) that lasted forever, because they just didn't do much
- Full-featured personal computing finally becoming "viable" on mobile devices, but with a clear cost (I remember <1 hour battery life laptops)
- More power-efficient HW and kinda-sorta-maybe-starting-to-be optimized SW that makes full-fat mobile computing much more bearableOutside of that the computer is good for probably 6 or 8 hours of my usual use case (ssh to remote server, a couple browser tabs, mac mail client open). I think the screen is a big power suck and I tend to find that autobrightness is putting it on max brightness setting even in an indoor room (like right now in fact). When I replaced the battery on the intel mac I was good for about 5 hours but I had to put the screen brightness on a minimal setting.
The Gameboy Pocket certainly had the shortest battery life of the GB/Pocket/Color trio due to using 2 AAA batteries. My experience with the original is that the batteries last a long time.
os2warpman•1d ago
A GameBoy from 1989 is highly likely to still function.
If you do not like the battery life of new products, continue to use the old ones.
There is no tradeoff.
anonzzzies•1d ago
pixl97•1d ago
In the 80s you had to get long battery life because you were generally throwing the batteries away and shoving in new ones. Now with rechargeables you just plug in the cord and you can both play and recharge at the same time. It's not a big expensive hassle.
Do customers want more features/graphics or more battery life?
JohnFen•1d ago
But I know there are others who prioritize other aspects over battery life.
cosmic_cheese•1d ago
I’d argue that we’re deep into that territory with graphics and have been for at least a decade now. Yes newer games look better, but the different isn’t radical like it is when comparing ~2005 games to their ~2015 counterparts, and outside of high settings junkies most people would be perfectly happy with 2015-2020 graphics for the foreseeable future.
Battery life on the other hand is nowhere near the point of diminishing returns for many devices. If Apple released an iPhone that got a week of real world battery life for example, it’d be an instant hit. I’d personally love for gaming handhelds to have that kind of just so they never need to be plugged in while used and I rarely have to think about recharging.
anonzzzies•21h ago
asdff•1d ago