(Only) On HN, I find this odd. I'll openly admit this is unreasonable for the "average consumer." So I'd never think to suggest mucking about with their system

(Only) On HN, I find this odd. I'll openly admit this is unreasonable for the "average consumer." So I'd never think to suggest mucking about with their systems. However, for tech-literate folk, if you really need extreme battery life, limit short/long TDP max values. If you are willing to use a noticeably slower machine because you value battery life, then instruct your machine to behave accordingly. It takes seconds and is way easier than writing any program. Zen 3+ cores are still quite fast with a 10/15 watt long/short power limit. On the Intel side, CPUs can further be instructed to disable all but 1 P-Core. Modern processors are pretty dynamic. I'm not pretending this will get you to arm levels of idle power draw, but things aren't an order of magnitude off, either. As a bonus, when you are plugged in, you get way more power on tap compared to any snapdragon.