The Mobile World Congress 2013 took place on 25–28 February at Fira Gran Via, in Barcelona, Spain. The event was the world's largest exhibition for the mobile industry and a conference featuring prominent executives representing mobile operators, device manufacturers, technology providers, vendors and content providers from across the world. This year, a different dynamic trend was taking shape; focus on the battery life of mobile devices. Previously, mobile devices manufacturers have been embroiled in a battle for supremacy in terms of processing power, memory, operating system and applications. However, as much as these components may be perfected, a cell phone's battery life has become one of the most important considerations when manufacturing a mobile device. In fact, customers are now keen on evaluating smart phones based on their battery lives. Most customers have seen their smart devices run out of charge while they are in the middle of an important call or replying to an urgent email. Most rural customers may not have the privilege of electricity and thus cannot maintain devices that require daily charging. Even though battery technology has improved 300% in the past 20 years, mobile technology has advanced more than a thousand-fold during the same time period.
The mobile devices manufacturers can borrow a leaf from the medicine fraternity. Batteries are used in implantable cardiac pacemakers to generate electric pulse in the heart. This presents unique challenges to their developers and manufacturers in terms of high levels of safety and reliability. In addition, the batteries must have longevity to avoid frequent replacements. The cardiac pacemaker uses half of its battery power for cardiac stimulation and the other half for housekeeping tasks such as monitoring and data logging. Using modern technology, the battery of a cardiac pacemaker lasts for about ten years and even today is the power source for many manufacturers of cardiac pacemakers. The initial pacemakers could only last for two years and required the patient to undergo a surgical procedure to replace the battery. The good news is that the procedure to change your pacemaker's battery is often quicker and requires less recovery time than the procedure to first implant your pacemaker.
At the Mobile World Congress 2013, Nokia unveiled a stripped-down cell phone aimed at the budget-conscious consumer and long battery life. The Nokia 105 mobile phone will retail for approximately Kshs. 1,500 and has a feature a battery that only needs charging. The phone features include 1.45-inch, 128 x 128 resolution color TFT screen, 8 MB ROM memory, no camera, flashlight, FM radio, speaking alarm clock, and five basic games, like Sudoku and the classic Snake. On a full charge, the Nokia 105 can deliver 12.5 hours of talk time or remain powered for up to 35 days on standby. On other hand, Samsung has recently released an infographic titled “Resolving the Battery Challenge in Mobile Devices” to show how modern mobile memory solutions help solving the battery life challenge in mobile devices. Samsung’s mobile memory solution, known as LPDRAM, can lower operating power consumption by 33% and standby power consumption by nearly 90%. That’s enough power to keep mobile devices on standby for more than 500 hours. There is also a new kid on the block, SpareOne. The cellular phone runs on a single AA battery, similar to the ones used in the torch or remote control, providing a constant line of communication even in the absence of electricity as well as the ability to pre-program important phone numbers for easy access to visitor, travel and emergency services. The phone can offer ten hours of talk time and can hold charge for up to 15 years if unused.
Meanwhile, as we continue to use our smartphones, there are a few tips on how to keep our batteries going. Due to the huge displays screen, a lot of power charge is consumed whenever we use our mobile devices. The best way to reduce this power consumption is by dimming the screen, especially during daytime when we can easily view the content of the screen. The lower the brightness, the lower the power required. The next thing is to ensure a short lock screen timeout, could be a few seconds, such that the phone locks and shuts the displays within the shortest period after use. Another aspect that most of us are not aware of is to avoid vibration mode. For a phone to vibrate, a micro motor is power to initiate the vibration mechanism, and this consumes power. A ringtone alert will suffice in most of the occasions. Now, we are fond of applications such as Google Navigator, four square and so on, that indicate our current location using the Global Positioning System. Most of the time, we forget or ignore to switch off the GPS functionality on the phone once we are done. With continue updates from the satellites, the phone consumes a great deal of power, thus turn off GPS when it’s not necessary.
Whenever we find a hotspot, we turn on our phone’s Wifi to take advantage of the low cost speedy Internet. Yet again, we often forget to turn it off afterwards. Though Wifi consumes less power than the GSM signal, we can save power by turning off Wifi when we are not using it. The same case applies to activation of Bluetooth. The other aspects is to abort applications that run in the background while we multitask, the more the applications, the more the processing power and the more the processing power, the more the battery power consumed. Lastly, we need to limit the notification we get; facebook, twitter, emails, meeting reminders and so on, or reduce the frequency.
