Apple pushing for all-day battery life with new jobs

If there’s one thing that everyone wants in a new mobile device, it’s a longer battery. That goal appears to be next on Apple’s agenda, as a series of job adverts spotted by AppleInsider shows.

From the range of positions that are open, it’s clear that Apple is looking at both hardware improvements and software changes to make its devices more efficient. These kinds of improvements make a lot of sense, as Jony Ive has said that Apple wouldn’t not simply just use bigger batteries.

To that end, Apple is looking for battery pack engineering manager, a cell engineer and an electrical engineer. These kinds of positions may well be associated with developing the battery packs used by the new MacBook, which have to be layered in order to fit into the tiny chassis.

On top of that, Apple is also hiring an iOS battery life software engineer, with the job advert asking, “Would you enjoy developing real-time analysis mechanisms to triage and mitigate battery life issues?”

From the advert, we can see that Apple’s strategy is to make the operating system as power-efficient as possible, eking more time out of the hardware. It’s likely that this kind of improvement would make its way into the next version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS 9.

One of the benefits of this type of approach is that any efficiencies Apple can create should be able to be implemented on older hardware. In other words, people upgrading from iOS 8.2 could find that their iPhone or iPad lasts longer.

As well as making software changes, Apple will continue to make its hardware more efficient, shrinking down the components inside. With the iPhone 7, due out next year, we could see a big improvement in battery life through a combination of low-power hardware and more efficient software.