Haven't phones, watches and tablets been using low refresh rates to enable battery improvements for a while?
The Apple Watch Series 5 (2019) has a refresh rate down to 1Hz.
M4 iPad Pro lacks always-on display despite OLED panel with variable refresh rate (2024):
https://9to5mac.com/2024/05/09/m4-ipad-pro-always-on-display...
Phones and watches do that with LTPO OLED which I don't believe exists at higher screen sizes although I'm not sure why. This is supposed to be special because it isn't OLED so should be able to get brighter and not have to worry about burn in.
LTPO has problems with uniformity of brightness, that get worse the larger the panels are. On a phone screen, this is usually not perceivable, but if you made a 27" screen out of it, most such screens would be visibly brighter in some corner or other.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/03/lg-display-starts-ma... is a better article but LG is light on details of their new proprietary display tech.
Panel Self Refresh should largely just work, and I believe has been on laptops for a long long time. Here's Intel demo'ing it in 2011. https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/14/intel_demos_panel_sel...
I'm not sure that there's really anything new here? 1Hz might be lower. Adoption might be not that good. But this might just be iteration on something that many folks have just not really taken good advantage of till now. There's perhaps signficiant display tech advancements to get the Hz low, without having significant G-Sync style screen-buffers to support it.
One factor that might be interesting, I don't know if there's a partial refresh anywhere. Having something moving on the screen but everything else stable would be neat to optimize for. I often have a video going in part of a screen. But that doesn't mean the whole screen needs to redraw.
Probably patent licensing shenanigans kept it holed up for awhile.
I’m not an expert here, but …
CRTs needed to be refreshed to keep the phosphors glowing. But all screens are now digital: why is there a refresh rate at all?
Can’t we memory-map the actual hardware bits behind each pixel and just draw directly (using PCIe or whatever)?
I think you're assuming that LCDs all have framebuffers, but this is not the case. A basic/cheap LCD does not store the state of its pixels anywhere. It electrically refreshes them as the signal comes in, much like a CRT. The pixels are blocking light instead of emitting it, but they will still fade out if left unrefreshed for long. So, the simple answer is, you can't get direct access to something when it doesn't even exist in the first place.
Dell needs to sell these XPS. The AI button doesn't do the trick, so battery life may do it.
What's the real-world battery life though? My mac gets 8 hours real world; 16 in benchmarks; 24 claimed by apple.
Assuming the xps has the same size battery, and this really reduces power consumption by 48%, I'd expect 16 hours real world, 32 in benchmarks and 48 in some workload Dell can cherry pick.
Both my last two XPSes have had shit battery life. Maybe 3.5h when new and only 2h after a few months of use. They also experience a lot of thermal throttling (i7 12700h, 9750h) and newer updates have removed the option of undervolting which used to fix that.
Positive is that the battery life couldn't possibly get worse with newer ones.
I have a December 2024 XPS 15 and I regularly get 7-8 hours out of a charge whilst doing a mixture of tasks. On Linux too, no less.
I put my MBP in low power mode when using the battery and I get easily 12-15 hours with my full dev environment running.
Dell has to deal with windows cuts that in half with all the slop and spyware.
Last I checked: the XPS was one of the few laptop product lines offering native Linux (Ubuntu) as an alternative default configuration option to order
It's how I got mine about 6-7 years back anyways, still works great (except the battery) ...never let windows get it's claws into the machine in the first place
Edit: to add, I realized over time that having a battery that lasts longer just can't seem to beat my older laptop experiences: being able to just swap an extra battery in and have full charge at will (without soldering and all that 'ish) In that sense I feel that the future is coming full circle to modularity, swapability, repairability - to the point they're becoming my primary considerations for the next portable computing select I will need to acquire.
> Last I checked
I checked 10 seconds ago. The only models I can order in my country with linux are Pro Max and a Precision workstation.
If I pretend to be located in the US, an XPS 13 from 2024 becomes available at 200$ more than the Windows variant, and no OLED option.
What a weird marketing strategy from Dell...
Yeah... Took a moment to look it up now:
Apparently they stopped making the Developer Edition which came with Ubuntu in 2022-2023 (which was definitely cheaper by 100-200 bucks or so than the Windows version with exact same hardware, I recall the developer edition os discount very clearly)
Now the XPS line has fallen as well, as apparently even the SSD now gets soldered to the motherboard, no longer possible to service with basic tools really once it starts failing. My old 2018-ish XPS has an M.2 slot and a battery that is relatively simple by modern standards to replace with some screwdrivers and careful handling (something I think is vital for a workhorse computer, as batteries 'decimate' in capacity within 2-3 years or so in my experience)
I don't even know what's left out there anymore among major makers... when I have to look again, maybe framework... Been hearing about them for a bit now and they seem quite relevant to the discussion - haven't seen one live yet to be fair
Powerbanks fill that role well. We have USB-C PD now
While I concede that powerbanks may satisfy the proximal problem - literally making charging available on demand... Consider that it does not in any way resolve the distal problem of having a 'portable computing device', which heavily compromises on the 'portable' aspect - by forcing a state of permanent battery anxiety without external life support (i.e. no power source - dead in minutes of intensive work) The powerbank is a fine workaround to be fair, but as I see it: still a workaround at best. The ability to swap a battery without getting into things like soldering - allows for far more flexible functionality and longevity than a powerbank could.
That is without even mentioning the ultimate problem of parts sustainability and longevity. When you can swap individual components as they degrade, it's possible to use the rest of the machine for far longer than a degraded battery or a failing SSD would allow.
Powerbanks simply feel like treating symptoms, instead of rehabilitating the system itself (obviously still use them for phones and such of course)
Maybe like 0.01% of users ever did that, or did any upgrades to their laptops. Moving to recyclable but integrated components is the right move for the vast majority of people. I’m sure there are some compromised devices for nerds out there that still allow for swapping batteries etc
OLED iPad dont have always on because of burn-in. Considering people certainly use it as photo frame, notification and time daahboars, kitchen recipe book, etc.
Less of a problem for iphones that unlikely to stay for a week in the same place plugged in and unused.
I don't think many people are spending $1k on an iPad Pro, the only iPad with OLED, to use as a picture frame.
They dont buy it for this purpose. Its just end up like that for a lot of people I know since it just weird device between iphone and macbook that end not being used for much.
It’s a professional mobile artist bonanza idk why you claim it isn’t used much when this expensive device is more than earning its worth
Yeah sure if you buy it as a toy it may not be used for much lol. Check your consumerism
I not saying anything about device itself.
I just pointing out how quite a big part of Apple consumer base use these devices: buy most expensive one, play with it for a few weeks and then leave it as kitchen tablet that is used ocassionally. You know every second housewife wants to be an artist but very few actually use it for this beyond first few weeks.
Providing this audience with always-on display is a sure way to have a lot of people unhappy with burned-in OLED screens.
Yeah so pretty niche use case. No need to attack others with snarky childish comments just because you dont like reality out there
First of all I love snark
Second, it is not a fault of the device that consumers are brain dead, buying something they do not need and then whine about how the device is “useless”. It sucks to suck
>M4 iPad Pro lacks always-on display despite OLED panel with variable refresh rate (2024):
Brightness, Uniformity, Colour Accuracy etc. It is hard as we take more and more features for granted. There is also cost issues, which is why you only see them in smaller screens.
iPad Pro only goes down to 10 FPS. This may be the display of the upcoming MacBook Pro.
What LG is pitching here is basically bringing that 1Hz floor capability to large laptop panels
Yes but I’m unaware of larger ones.