Battery life is often an issue for many smartphone users. In order to resolve this problem, researchers have recently discovered a new way to reduce cell phone power consumption and extend the battery life by more than 50 percent.
According to engineering professor Xinyu Zhang and doctoral student Xinyu Zhang from the University of Michigan, smartphones in power-saving modes spend 60 to 80 percent of their time performing idle listening, a state in which they constantly check the network to see if there is any new data coming in. This mode often expends as much power as actively sending and receiving messages all day.
To minimize power consumption, the researchers developed a new approach, called Energy-Minimizing Idle Listening (E-MiLi), which keeps the phones barely awake instead of fully awake by slowing down the Wi-Fi card's clock to 1/16 of its normal frequency. Idling in the "subconscious mode", smartphones and other Wi-Fi enabled mobile devices could search for Wi-Fi signals more efficiently, which in turn extends the battery life by up to 54 percent.
However, the real challenge is not putting smartphones in the subconscious mode, but waking them up again, said Shin and his team. To be able to recognize an incoming message even when it is mostly asleep, the phone must be equipped with a new firmware created by the team that gives it the ability to encode message headers in a certain way. This is not quite as easy as downloading an application. Manufacturers will have to adopt these firmware modifications and incorporate new chips into their products.
The approach is not yet commercially available, but if E-MiLi does become widespread in the future, it would be a big step in improving the battery life of mobile devices, promising users more time to talk, text and interact with their phones.
Tags: Cell Phone Batteries, Travel Chargers, Car Chargers, Data Cables, Memory Cards, Bluetooth Headsets and Accessories
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