According to a report by Apple Insider, Apple has filed a patent application with the US Patent and Trademark Office that talks about a way through which a mobile device could monitor the charge and discharge cycles of its battery and utilize the information to predict what a user will do at a given point in time.
The predictions will help the device to alter settings for screen brightness, processor clock speed and other parameters to conserve battery while optimizing processing power.
The patent filing is titled 'Inferring user intent from battery usage level and charging trends,' and Apple mentions that it details techniques for power management of a portable device.
"According to one embodiment, a user agent of an operating system executed within a portable device is configured to monitor daily battery usage of a battery of the portable device, to capturing, by the user agent, daily battery charging pattern of the battery of the portable device, and to inferring, by the user agent, user intent of utilizing the portable device at a given point in time based on a battery operating condition at the point in time in view of the daily battery usage and the daily battery charging pattern. Power management logic is configured to perform power management actions based on the user intent," says Apple.
As per Apple, the system would take information from the applications the user runs, sensors (ambient light, motions (gyro, light sensors), location (global positioning system or GPS), wireless network availability) collecting data about the user's environment, and from the user's physical interactions with the device (screen on/off, power adapter attach/detach). It would analyze the information from the various heuristics and select the best combination of performance and efficiency.
Unlike conventional battery saving techniques that start power management only when the battery is already very low, Apple's power management technique will focus on long term power budgeting to ensure "that the device's power usage over time does not deplete the battery," as per Apple.
This means that the phone could reduce battery brightness when the user is in a dark room or automatically turn on the phone's airplane mode when a user presents a boarding pass through Apple's Passbook app or judge if the phone will be able to play a movie for its entire duration and reduce the frame rate or stop other apps. The system would be capable of assessing the flight duration through the calendar or the duration of the movie via metadata.
However, power users need not worry as Apple will be able to determine if a user uses the device extensively and accordingly the system will not tinker with the phone.
"If the charge consumed exceeds the batteries capacity significantly then the user is certainly using its device fully and the power management system's effect on performance to avoid the mid-day charge would likely be upsetting to the user,"Apple added.
As with all patent filings, it is difficult to predict when Apple will deploy the new intelligent battery management technology or whether it will actually use it ever.
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