Edge Battery Life Claims May Be Bad News for Windows 10 on Snapdragon (Premium)

Microsoft is once again claiming that its Edge web browser delivers significantly better battery life than Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox. But this has been consistently the case over the past few years, and this advantage has not led to any usage gains.

This may be bad news for Microsoft's efforts to port Windows 10 to the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset. As you may know, dramatically better battery life is the key advantage of this chipset over the better-performing hardware made by Intel and AMD.

And having now spoken to two people who have actually been using Snapdragon-based PCs---one the ASUS model and one the HP---I can report that the battery life claims are apparently real: Both sources claimed that the devices garnered "20 hours" of real-world battery life. And one noted how "freaky" it was that the battery doesn't drain when the device isn't in use.

Performance, of course, is a concern. I was told that the performance is slow when the device first wakes up, but that it improves over time. They didn't make this comparison, but that reminds me of the performance behavior of older Intel Core m3 chips.

One source also provided some insight into how these devices might find a place in the market: Rather than considering them in head-to-head comparisons against standard Intel-based PCs, it may be fairer to compare them to the iPad Pro, I was told. And on that note, Snapdragon-based PCs offer better performance, much better battery life, and compatibility with real Windows applications.

That positioning may be wise. Because, as we've seen with Microsoft Edge, which has consistently provided better battery life than its competition, this advantage has never mattered much to users. Microsoft claimed in June 2016, September 2016, and then April 2017 that Edge has consistently provided better battery life than Chrome or Firefox.

And now it's doing so again: A new round of battery life comparisons with latest versions of competing browsers shows that Edge delivers up to 19 percent better battery life than Chrome. And up to 63 percent better than Firefox.

The supposition here is that this kind of advantage will drive usage. But as I noted a few weeks back, Microsoft Edge is a disaster: Microsoft's latest web browser is only used by 3.68 percent of all desktop-based web users, according to NetApplications. StatCounter says its even lower, at 2.06 percent.

Suppositions are just that. The supposition for Windows 10 S is that there is some audience of professional users out there who could get real work done with only Edge, Microsoft Office, and a handful of mostly-terrible Store apps, and that they would do so for that system's supposed reliability, security, and performance benefits. But that isn't happening, and no one can successfully use Windows 10 S, as it's just too limited.

Anyway, this is making me wonder about Windows 10 on Snapdragon: The supposition here is that there is some audience of professional users ou...