Nokia Siemens Networks and Qualcomm team-up to increase smartphone’sbattery life

Nokia Siemens Networks has collaborated with Qualcomm to conduct the industry’s first successful interoperability test of the new 3GPP standardized Release 8 Fast Dormancy feature. Operators now have an extra tool that gives more smartphones longer battery life, while decreasing network congestion.

Unlike proprietary approaches to fast dormancy, the new standard allows operators to take full advantage of smart network features such as Cell_PCH without worrying that individual handset settings will ignore network controls.

Smartphones are increasingly "always-on", with apps receiving frequent updates and messages. This can cause batteries to drain fast. The proprietary approach to preserving battery life has been for smartphones to rapidly disconnect from the network once information is sent or received. This is Fast Dormancy. The problem for operators is that the constant making and breaking of connections causes a huge increase in signaling traffic, which wastes network resources and can mean fewer smartphones are able to connect.

Nokia Siemens Networks’ Cell_PCH solves this problem by putting phones into a battery-preserving idle state, but maintaining a connection identity on the network. Up until now using Cell_PCH in multivendor networks has been a challenge as no other vendor employs the standard technique, despite all smartphones having built-in Cell_PCH capability. This test shows how smartphones can act dynamically, exploiting Cell_PCH on Nokia Siemens Networks’ smart networks or adjusting to Fast Dormancy on other vendors’ traditional networks.

The test was conducted at Nokia Siemens Networks’ Smart Lab in Dallas using Nokia Siemens Networks’ award-winning Flexi Multiradio Base Station and Radio Network Controller and Qualcomm's QSC7230TM smartphone optimized chipset. The test showed that operators with multivendor networks can benefit from Nokia Siemens Networks’ uniquely deployed Cell_PCH functionality that prolongs mobile device battery life and handles signaling up to 50% more efficiently. Nearly 100 operators worldwide have already deployed Nokia Siemens Networks’ Cell_PCH functionality.

Nokia Siemens Networks is committed to working toward addressing the ongoing smartphone challenges faced by network operators by innovating with all of the partners in the value chain. To foster the mobile Internet ecosystem and encourage cooperation with application developers, device manufacturers, service providers and systems integrators, Nokia Siemens Networks set up ‘Smart Labs’ in Espoo (Finland) and Dallas (USA) in March 2010. The company’s commitment also includes the creation of a ‘Smartphone Experience Lab’ based in Telefónica premises in Madrid.