NSN and Qualcomm co-op to improve smartphone performance

The problems associated with smartphone battery life could be on the way to being solved, according to tests jointly conducted by Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) and Qualcomm.

While smartphone technology has become increasingly power hungry, the problem has been exacerbated by apps increasingly being developed to require an 'always on' network connection to receive frequent updates and messages.

Attempts to fix this problem with proprietary solutions have been tried using a feature called fast dormancy, according to Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN). However, this approach has imposed a heavy toll on networks due to the near constant 'pinging' as the smartphone connects and disconnects.

NSN and Qualcomm now claim that, using a standardised and improved version of Fast Dormancy, they can solve this issue by allowing networks and smartphones to communicate with each other in a way that takes battery life as well as network congestion into consideration.

NSN maintains that, using the existing Cell_PCH feature within smartphones, battery life can significantly improve using an idle state, while still retaining a connection to the network. Up until now, said NSN, using Cell_PCH in multi-vendor networks had been a challenge as no other vendor employed the standard technique, despite all smartphones having built-in Cell_PCH capability.

The interop test conducted by NSN and Qualcomm indicated that smartphones could act dynamically, exploiting Cell_PCH on NSN networks or adjusting to Fast Dormancy on other vendors' traditional networks.

The firms claim that the tests, using Qualcomm smartphone chipsets, could provide signaling efficiency improvements of up to 50 per cent for operators with multi-vendor networks.

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