Learn what drains the battery on your Windows Mobile device

[Bob Russell]

If you have a Pocket PC device, then everything you want to find out about your device's battery drain is available to you now. There is a new application called acbPowerMeter that lets you measure the load put on your device by various functions like CPU, display, wireless radio, speaker, etc.

And in a blog entry, Werner Ruotsalainen takes a look at battery life in some Pocket PC devices, and tells us all about it with some very detailed information. You'll have to wade through a lot of that detail, but it might be especially interesting to look at some of his results if you have a Dell x51v.

One of the interesting observations is evidence of how well that device makes use of its dedicated video processing chip to reduce consumption with tasks like showing video with the TCPMP player.

Battery drain has always been somewhat of a mystery, and more tools like this may not only help us to understand how to get better life out of a charge, but also keep manufacturers of hardware on their toes to minimize power consumption once consumers can see it for themselves.