OQO Model 2+ OLED Display Not As Frugal As Expected

Details are still emerging about OQO's Model 2+ UMPC, and one of its most interesting aspects: the OLED touchscreen.  Aside from brighter colors and improved contrast, OLED is said to offer much-reduced power consumption over LCD; that bodes well for a mobile device like the Model 2+.  In the field, though, things aren't looking quite so positive, with Steve Paine reporting 10.5w drain with the backlight on high – that works out to potentially under 2hrs use from the standard 17wh battery.

Switch the backlight down to its lowest setting, and drain falls to, at its lowest, 7.8w.  Whether the display is showing predominantly white or predominantly black pixels will make a difference, but the overall judgement is the same: the OLED display just isn't delivering on all of its promises.

If you can make do with 50-percent brightness ("enough for a daylight room"), locking the Atom CPU to 800MHz with the OQO in power saving mode, and setting the fan to 'quiet', you can apparently stretch out battery life to 3hrs (with 3G active).  That's dependent on not stressing the system with too many flash movies or lashings of multimedia however.

There's still plenty to like the OQO Model 2+ for, but longevity with the standard power pack doesn't look to be one of them.  I'm curious to SlashGear readers' expectations of runtime from their mobile devices: where's your bottom limit?  Let me know in the comments.