Windows 10 Power Management

As users have come to rely on laptops and other mobile devices, the ability of the Windows client OS to conserve battery life has been evolving. For example, with Windows 7, changes were made to support both standby and hibernation so that some processing could continue while reducing the load on the device’s battery.

With the addition of support for ARM processors with Windows RT, Windows 8 was adapted to support “Connected Standby” or “Instant Go,” so that users could quickly start mobile devices such as tablets to access applications.

Windows 10 includes “Modern Standby,” which is an umbrella term for the former Connected Standby and a new Disconnected Standby. Modern Standby is designed to conserve power and support new features such as wake on voice, fingerprint (scanner activation), and Bluetooth (device activation), which are commonly used with mobile devices such as smartphones.

Under Modern Standby, only wake events that are user-initiated cause the system to turn on the display. In addition, wake source operation and scenarios should be the same for all devices supporting Modern Standby, regardless of processor architecture and across all form factors without regard to whether the device is running on AC or battery power.