Certification should include rough battery lifeTime

[Michel-Ekimia]

Certifing components is important but sometimes even if a graphic card works correctly, the battery lifetime will be really different from what the Manufacturer announce. Sometimes even only 50% on Ubuntu compare to W7.
I could be great if a basic Battery lifetime like "surfing on Websites including Flash" could be displayed on certifications.

[Daniel Manrique (roadmr)]

The quoted battery life from a manufacturer is almost always too optimistic. Check any review site and you'll see they all have different battery life test suites, they all get different results, *and* they are always less than what the manufacturer quotes. So if we do get this information for our systems, it *will* be lower than what the manufacturer quotes.

This should have no bearing on a system's certification status, as battery life under Linux depends on a number of factors such as process load, kernel version, parameters, and even the actual age of the battery (so our tests would show decreasing battery life over time as the battery loses the capacity to hold charge, whereas a manufacturer always quotes data for a fresh, new battery). As kernel and system configurations get updated, this number could vary wildly, so even quoting this as part of a system's certification page would be quite misleading to the end-user.

I recognize that work has to be done to get Linux battery autonomy on par with that of other OSes, but again, I don't believe this is information that belongs in a certification decision or data sheet.

[Michel-Ekimia (michel.ekimia)]

thanks for those details daniel.

Battery life cannot be accurate in most case. But a 10% difference with a value announced is acceptable.

I guess the certificator (either the manufacturer or canonical) has a model with quite a recent battery and thus battery life estimation would be useful.

About kernel evolution, if Battery life with iso 11.04 for example is 10% close to W7 one, people will go for this model. even if with updates the battery life vary for 5 %.

I had an arrandale intel ( CLEVO S3101 U3400) (not certified) where battery life is only 60% of W7 results, so it's a good point to know.

I agree it should not be in the certification report but at least it should appear somewhere

[Victor Tuson Palau (vtuson)]

although it is hardware related. we are getting on the realms of comparing linux battery consumption with Windows. Although it is a valid discussion, realistic this will be very low down on our priorities for certification at the moment.