Apple, Nokia use 'fast dormancy' to boost battery life

Apple's latest iPhone software supports a technology that makes smartphone signalling more efficient, to boost battery life and try to combat network congestion.

According to a Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) blog post on Tuesday, iOS 4.2 — released on 22 November — introduced support for Network Controlled Fast Dormancy, which NSN has implemented on the network side and Nokia started building into its smartphones earlier this year.

"Basically, the technology makes the network and the handset work together to create the best conditions for smartphones to work quickly, yet have a long battery life and minimise network congestion," Leslie Shannon of NSN's Network Systems Mobile Broadband team wrote.

Because of the nature of their apps, smartphones tend to constantly connect to and disconnect from the network — they need to do this in order to check for emails or tweets, for example. This clogs up the network and lessens battery life. Network Controlled Fast Dormancy effectively keeps the handset in an intermediate state, so it doesn't have to keep shifting between idle and active states.

"From here, a smartphone can wake up much more quickly and needs to send far fewer signals to and from the network to start a data connection," Shannon wrote. "You get a fast network response and a longer battery life. The new Apple software release supports this way of working on networks that have the technology implemented.

"Nokia also implemented the technology in its smartphones earlier this year. So now the two handset makers that account for half of all new smartphones in the world contribute to an improved user experience and cost reduction for operators."