Getting home at the end of an evening and realising you’ve still got plenty of battery remaining is a great feeling, but it’s one that Xperia^TM owners are well-accustomed to.

This sort of battery conserving tech doesn’t happen by chance. Capacity is one thing, but it’s innovative power-saving adaptations that make your Xperia as efficient as it can possibly be, as well as giving Xperia devices some of the best smartphone battery lives on the market.

We wanted to know more, so we caught up with Xperia battery engineers to get the full lowdown.

Xperia Hardware engineer Daisuke Haruki and Xperia Software engineer Hidenari Shinoto have been working at Sony in Tokyo for a combined total of 20 years, and here’s what they had to say:

Haruki-san and Shinoto-san, please tell us how you’ve made the Xperia XZ2 battery the best in class?
Shinoto-san:
It was a long process, but essentially it involved optimising software to ensure programs run as efficiently as possible.
Haruki-san:
From a hardware point of view, we had to find the perfect equilibrium between battery size and capacity – we think the balance in the XZ2 will really please users.

How do you make a battery more efficient?
Shinoto-san:
It’s quite complex, but the XZ2’s CPU has four low-power cores and four high-performance cores. We tuned the software which controls the CPU to operate more efficiently in order to achieve both performance and power saving.
Haruki-san:
From the hardware side, we defined verification conditions, procedures and usage time based on the results of market analysis and used that, together with user survey results, to benchmark battery performance.

You’ve done the hard work, but what steps would you suggest Xperia users take to improve the battery’s longevity?
Both:
We’d suggest setting the charging option to match your lifestyle. Xperia smartphones have multiple settings that adapt to optimize their batteries, so that users don’t actually have to do anything.
– Adaptive charging : Optimizes charge current based on the handset’s real time battery condition (Always on).
– Soft charging : Optimizes charge voltage to keep the battery healthier for longer (Always on).
– Battery case function : Optimizes charging protocol based on the user’s lifestyle machine learning. (This one you have to choose to activate manually).
These charging advances really improve battery life in the long run. It’s the sort of thing you don’t notice, but means that a battery chargelasts that much longer.

Sony Mobile is continuously evolving the handset’s entertainment offering. Does this put a lot of pressure on you to create even more efficient batteries that last longer?
Shinoto-san:
Absolutely. The demand is high every time and with more people consuming content on-the-go, it’s getting higher! It’s always a challenge to optimize, but we get there, using new technology to incrementally increase performance.
Haruki-san:
Yes, it’s the same for the hardware team. The XZ2, for example, has some new entertainment features such as Dynamic Vibration System and the HDR converter. These amazing advances need an amazing battery . We need to first ascertain the power consumption of each new feature and then discuss the optimum power balance to ensure the right performance.

How do you test the batteries?
Haruki-san:
Thoroughly. Essentially, we put them in real-world conditions and perform rigourous tests: hours of phone interaction on battery-intensive apps while setting the brightness to its fullest!

What does the future hold for Xperia smartphone batteries? Will it one day be possible to create a smartphone battery that lasts for a week?
Haruki-san:
That’s our aim, to make the longest battery life possible. Every day we are studying the handsets and exploring new ways to make our smartphones even more efficient.

What are you working on next?
Haruki-san:
Since power saving gives freedom to designs and functions, we are looking to make the lowest-power usage handset.

The post Meet The Makers: The team behind Xperia’s best in class battery performance appeared first on Sony Xperia Blog.

Source: Sony Mobile Blog
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