Intel's new tech paves way for 28-hour laptop battery life

Laptops with a battery life of 28 hours may soon become a reality, and it won't even require a bigger battery.

According to Intel's announcement at Computex, the company is working on something called "Intel Low Power Display Technology," which can cut LCD power consumption in half, and thus drastically reduce battery drainage.

Today's laptops have processors which can use an array of techniques to reduce battery consumption, but their screens, which also drain a lot of battery life, are a tougher nut to crack.

But new, one watt LCD panels manufactured by Sharp and Innolux, combined with Intel's tech, should provide an additional "four to eight hours" of local video playback and enable some devices to have up to 28 hours of battery life.

If this sounds too good to be true, it kinda is, as it comes with several caveats. First, Intel says that potential 28 hour battery life projection is based on "several power savings techniques." The company also says it achieved these results at 150 nits of screen brightness, which is pretty dark and will only be acceptable in certain scenarios. All this probably means you will rarely see such results in real life usage.

Additionally, according to The Verge, this will only work with Intel's integrated graphics chips, so forget about it if your laptop has Nvidia or AMD graphics.

Still, battery life improvements are always welcome, and if Intel's tech can make laptops last even a little longer, we won't complain (much).