FEBRUARY 2019 PCWorld 85srch), and Focus Assist (go.pcworld.com/
focs) that have been quietly added to
Windows and Office over time.
Battery life: Newman never mentioned
Qualcomm once, but Intel has to have
Qualcomm and its power-sipping
Snapdragon 8cx chip (go.pcworld.com/
q8cx) in its mirrors. Again, though, this isn’t
just about minimizing CPU power. “It’s about
best-known
configurations,
working with the
ecosystem on the
lowest-power
components,
putting these
together in the
best recipes to
maximize battery
life in real-world
user scenarios,”
Newman said.
Expect to see more
emphasis on Intel’s
collaborative work in 1-watt
display panels (go.pcworld.
com/1wpa), Newman said,
along with undisclosed
improvements in battery
technology. All of these
low-power components, put
together, will combine to
form the “recipes”
Newman’s describing.
One metric that Qualcomm and Intel may
end up adjusting is exactly how battery life is
measured. No user’s computing experience
is exactly alike, and a day of using a
notebook at a university or at a sales
conference is much different than editing
video back at your desk. Video rundown
tests, though simple and effective, may be
replaced with something else.Maximizing battery life is one goal of Project Athena.
Remember, the message behind the Intel “Whiskey Lake” processors powering
many notebooks at CES is connectivity, not just performance.