Just a casual observation: when it is winter, my personal devices such as cellphone and Ipad consume power more quickly compared when it is in the summer.
But this could simply because of change is usage habit: staying at home more leads to using your gadgets more often.
At the same time I have noticed that the back of my Ipad heats up a lot more during the winter, which could be caused by greater power usage.
Does anyone have any insights into how ambient temperature dictates power consumption in electronics (maybe even consumer electronics)?
Best Answer
It's the opposite, actually.
Your devices are made up of individual electrical components, while datasheet for the devices are harder to come by, we can look at component datasheets easily.
The above is a power consumption over temperature plot for a processor, one of the major power consumers in your devices. Most components have a positive coefficient for power consumption and temperature. Some have less linear curves where consumption is minimum at some middle value.
But for the most part, hotter devices use more power to operate normally.
As others have commented, this doesn't take into account the battery capacity when it gets cold. The lower capacity of the battery due to temperature might be large enough to make the devices seem to last less time in the cold. But, the answer of "do they consume more power when cold?" is no.