E-MiLi, also known as Energy-Minimizing Idle Listening, is a proof-of-concept cellphone modification being developed by professor Kang Shin and student Xinyu Zhang at the University of Michigan that increase cellphone battery life by up 54%. When your cellphone is on and connected to Wi-Fi, it is constantly sniffing around for incoming traffic, even when idle, and that eats up battery. This is the problem E-MiLi aims to fix.
E-MiLi is a process that cuts down a phone’s Wi-Fi card down to 1/16th of its normal speed during transmission lulls, which is how the power saving is achieved. Then, when E-MiLi detects incoming data, it kicks things back into full gear and everything is back to normal. Afterwards, it returns to dormancy.
While this is impressive, there are a couple of things to mention about this development. First, it helps your phone save power on Wi-Fi. If you’re on 3G or 4G, there’s no help to be had yet. Second, it’s only a proof of concept. E-MiLi isn’t available at the moment and probably won’t be for a while because third, it requires a firmware update in order to function.
What this all means is that while E-MiLi could be the saving grace for cellphone users who spend a lot of time on Wi-Fi, it can’t be functional without widespread industry adoption and widespread firmware updates. Now that isn’t out of the question, but you know how fast those kinds of things move.
Full press release at Engadget.
(via Engadget)
