As an experiment quite a few years ago I got a laptop with a special version of the Intel CPU that was not as fast but much more power efficient. ASUS UL30A-X5

As an experiment quite a few years ago I got a laptop with a special version of the Intel CPU that was not as fast but much more power efficient. ASUS UL30A-X5 Really an excellent computer, ran linux great (games didn't really exist yet though), and with tuning was coming in under 10W if the display brightness was turned down. First time I was able to get through flights without the system running dead. I think in this case what's going on is that temperature rises increase resistance in a chip and therefore cause lower efficiency. If you can keep it cool, you can keep it more efficient. The move seems like a necessary one, a computer as powerful as that UL30A is probably inside the phone if you turn off the radio and display, that thing still had a giant battery and only lasted 10-12 hours. I've seen AMD do some pretty impressive things, I wouldn't count them out. They're at least willing to attempt to compete on price.