O-Sleep: Smartphones' Output-Oriented Power Saving Mode

Abstract

Fast battery discharge is the most concerned issue for smart phone users. This is the result of the smart phone's convergence trend and increasing complexity of its applications. Energy management techniques to reduce unnecessary battery usage are being studied. In this paper, we propose a new paradigm-shifting power saving mode for smart phones. O-Sleep is a smart phone's output-oriented power saving mode. Rather than entering processor sleep mode when there is no user input, o-sleep puts a smart phone's user interface into sleep mode when there is no meaningful output from the phone. While a device is processing a user's request, output from the device may require processing time. We consider the situation as the device's output idle time and put the phone's user interfaces into sleep mode while maintaining other subsystems in active state. To prove our concept, we have applied our technique onto various smart phone applications with varying operation environment. From the experiment, we have found we can save 37% of power consumption during up to 58% of its active usage with our test scenarios.