MP3.com (part of CNet) has an article up on the battery life of MP3 players, how close they come to the stated specs and what sort of things drain the power more quickly. Big headsets and watching videos are obvious culprits, but it turns out that restricting songs with DRM can significantly reduce the battery life.
“Heavy DRM not only slows down an MP3 player but also sucks the very life out of them. Take, for instance, the critically acclaimed Creative Zen Vision:M, with a rated battery life of up to 14 hours for audio and 4 hours for video. CNET tested it at nearly 16 hours, with MP3s–impressive indeed. Upon playing back only WMA subscription tracks, the Vision:M scored at just more than 12 hours. That’s a loss of almost 4 hours, and you haven’t even turned the backlight on yet…We found similar discrepancies with other PlaysForSure players. The Archos Gmini 402 Camcorder maxed out at 11 hours, but with DRM tracks, it played for less than 9 hours.”
Considering there are already problems with the battery life of mobile phones and these are only going to get worse as new wireless technologies are added and more rich-media content is used something that reduces the effective battery by 25% is a huge issue. Developers of DRM need to consider battery life when they make their product if it’s going to be on mobile devices…(via TechDirt)
Related stories:
–Open DRM To Drive Mobile Content: Frost & Sullivan
–CORRECTION: DRM Delayed Nokia’s ‘iPod’ Phone
–Motricity Adds OMA Support
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