Microsoft has disclosed a new feature in its Insider update that is alleged to increase the battery life on Windows 10 PCs. The feature is called 'Power Throttling', has been included in the latest Windows 10 Insider Preview build 16176. MS states that this updated feature will make Windows 10 PC’s CPU switch automatically to energy-efficient operation mode, in order to scale down the overall power consumption.

Bill Karagounis, the director of program management, Windows Insider Program & OS Fundamentals, Microsoft said "You may remember some of our January power experiments we revealed in release notes of Build 15002. Power Throttling feature was one of those exercises, and resulted up to 11% power consumption savings in CPU for some of the most energy-consuming use cases"

Microsoft has clarified that this feature will only be limited to devices that possess Intel's 6th-gen (and upper) Core processors as of now. Microsoft is engaged in launching this feature for other processors in the next coming few months.

From now, those who update to Windows 10 Insider can control 'Power Throttling' settings in the whole system, through a power slider button. Karagounis added that Windows currently keeps the processor in its efficient range when users select "Battery Saver" or "Recommended" options, and completely turns off it when they select the "Best Performance" option.

It would also be possible to remove apps from the 'Power Throttling' list. It can be done by moving to Battery Settings > Battery Usage by App, selecting the app, and turning off the 'Reduce work app does when in background' option' under 'Managed by Windows'.

'Power Throttling' is not the official name of the feature as of now, according to Microsoft, and that we can predict that the company will improve the feature over time.

This isn’t only the new OS feature that Microsoft is only working on behind the curtains, but also making easier for millions of existing users to log in to its accounts.

Microsoft recently launched 'phone sign-ins' to help users sign in using their user ID and simply login via their smartphones, without the need to input account passwords anywhere.

The feature works like Google's sign-in prompt and uses a mobile app called Microsoft Authenticator (available on Android, iOS and Windows 10 Mobile) to confirm the identity of the user. Users have to select the 'Enable phone sign-in' option to set up the account.

While logging in, once the user puts in his/her user ID, they'll get an alert on their registered smartphone to 'validate' the login. Once verified, the user will automatically be signed in.