There was definitely a period of (at least subjective) declining battery life in the 2010s but IMO things are shifting the other way. Some devices these days have much improved battery life over what came before, like Apple silicon, the Steam Deck, and most flagship phones. They're not always an order of magnitude better than the past, but better enough to unluck many use cases (doing a long work session away from a charger, being able to game for several hours anywhere, and not worrying about having to charge my phone until I get home, respectively).<p>If I had to describe it loosely, we've had 3 "eras" of battery-powered computing:<p><pre><code> - Relatively simple devices (like the Gameboy) that lasted forever, because they just didn't do much
- Full-featured personal computing finally becoming "viable" on mobile devices, but with a clear cost (I remember <1 hour battery life laptops)
- More power-efficient HW and kinda-sorta-maybe-starting-to-be optimized SW that makes full-fat mobile computing much more bearable</code></pre>
> But as a gamer, or even as an end user of any embedded piece of hardware, the trend towards shorter battery lives of devices is definitely visible.<p>No it isn't.<p>Also, apples to apples isn't even close. Even just the gameboy vs gameboy color ignores that they used different batteries. Also rechargable vs not.<p>I had a Gameboy and the move to rechargable batteries is a GOD send. I don't need battery-life as much as I needed to not be spending $$$ to play my games.
Well, first this should be marked as (2021).<p>The rest is just a bunch of BS anecdata that definitely does not tell the story the author wants it to tell. The chart is sorted by battery life rather than date which really muddies the picture. Looking at the dates I don't see "the decline of battery life" but rather "battery life is highly variable but devices are getting more efficient as they get more powerful".<p>Progress in the last 4 years (through mid-2025) shows this post has aged poorly even if the premise had been supported by the data. Many handhelds gaming devices get over 6 hours continuous play, and several like the Odin 2 have larger batteries and can get 10-12 hours easily. And they can be recharged from typical USB chargers.
Honestly I feel like a lot of the “battery life is worse now” talk kind of misses something important. The way we use our devices has completely changed.
Back then we used them in short focused bursts. Now we want our phones and laptops to stay connected all the time, keep background apps running, drive high refresh screens, and even run AI features locally. That’s a big shift in expectations.
So maybe battery life didn’t actually get worse. Maybe we’re just expecting way more from our devices than we used to, and we don’t always think about what that really costs.
I believe the PS Vita only got about 6~7 hours of gaming time per charge, but it held charge while sleeping/powered off better than any portable electronic I've ever owned (which to me is a more valuable quality than total battery life).
> a 4:3 LCD screen (the same as a PSP)<p>I assume this is a typo for 4.3", because PSP is definitely 16:9 and photos of the Evercade look to be as well.
As an aside, I do not remember Game Boy lasting 25 hours on 4 AA batteries. They were 4-6 hours AT BEST for me, and I played on it quite a lot. But maybe my memory is hazy.
>Power for battery life—a fair trade-off? I’m not so sure.<p>A GameBoy from 1989 is highly likely to still function.<p>If you do not like the battery life of new products, continue to use the old ones.<p>There is no tradeoff.