Mobile Wi-Fi battery issues 'solved'

Shortened battery life in phones using Wi-Fi is an issue that has been "solved" in the latest generation of smartphones, the founder of internet telephony company Truphone has claimed.

Truphone founder and chief executive James Tagg says that the issue of drastic reduction in battery life when using Wi-Fi on a Windows Mobile 5.0 phone — the most popular version of Microsoft's mobile operating system — will never be solved, but the latest iteration of the operating system, Windows Mobile 6, has made dramatic progress.

"A lot of work [has been done] with the manufacturers of the Wi-Fi chips [together with] some proper thought around the software stack," Tagg told ZDNet UK on Monday.

Tagg also suggested that, depending on how they are used, the latest Nokia phones can often offer "better life out of the Wi-Fi [radio] than the cellular", because Wi-Fi actually uses less power than cellular connectivity.

A spokesperson for chipset manufacturer Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) agreed that the industry was "certainly making big strides" in power saving, but warned that "adding any enhancement to a platform is going to have an impact in some way".

"We are getting to the point where [the inclusion of Wi-Fi] is no longer an impediment to the end-consumer's decision to choose a product that incorporates that technology," CSR's spokesperson added.

Truphone's VoIP software, currently in beta form, can be installed on Wi-Fi-capable phones to allow low-cost voice calls and text messages to be made from any wirelessly enabled location. Highly truncated battery life has, however, generally been a primary criticism of Wi-Fi-capable phones.