
Wednesday November 17, 2004
The answer may lie in the existence of better radio network coverage, offered by Movistar to my Sidekick II, which is a tri-band GSM/GPRS phone. Or it may lie in the fact that I've not used it as much to talk and more to send and receive messages and e-mail. In any case, it's interesting to think about how radio network configuration and availability affects battery consumption in mobile stations.
Power usage on a network must tightly relate to availability and distribution of connection points. For example, see this presentation.
I'm sure some people have already considered how to gain aggregate power savings by means of relay among mobile stations themselves. This will probably improve aggregate power usage at the expense of power usage on phones closer to the tower. Discussion of this hypothesis regarding aggregate power advantage at the expense of some members of a mobile cell seems like great material for academic research.