849487 - Enhancement : Implement a "low power" mode for Notebooks and tablets

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Tracking, enhancement)

Description

[Mayank Bansal]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20130306 Firefox/22.0
Build ID: 20130306031012

Steps to reproduce:

 Implement a low-power or power saving mode for laptops/notebooks/tablets.  What this will be used for is when the device is on battery, and user wants to use the browser.  Even though the power management is the work of the OS, consider the following scenario :

1. User is on battery. He selects "maximum power saving" in the OS settings.  
2. So the CPU is throttled to lets say 50% of the max value
3. User goes to a site with heavy Javascript/images/videos.
4. In max power mode, page takes x seconds to load.  But now, when the CPU is working at 50% efficiency, page takes 2x the time.  
5. Effectively, total energy used is same.


It would be great if there is a power saving mode that can do the following :

1. Images are scaled down in quality. So total processing needed to display an image is lesser.
2. Javascript becomes less accurate.
3. Font smoohing/shaping can become less accurate/blurry. Choppier audio.
4. Basic theming of borders and UI
5.Internal counters can become slower or less accurtate.
6. Jerky animations/transitions.
7. Other changes.


Basically, do intentional inaccuracy in trade for battery life.  
If you slow the processor, without choosing inaccuracy, you will still burn the same amount of energy, just spread over a longer period of time.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This seems like a tracking bug with specific bugs needing to be filed for specific issues...

Comment 2

[BMO Automation]

Marking all tracking bugs which haven't been updated since 2014 as INCOMPLETE.
If this bug is still relevant, please reopen it and move it into a bugzilla component related to the work
being tracked. The Core: Tracking component will no longer be used.