Apple wants to improve the iPhone’s battery life by learning a user’s habits and usage patterns, and adapting the device as per these signals to maximise battery life. The system is described in an Apple patent filed with the USPTO titled “Inferring User Intent From Battery Usage Level and Charging Trends.”
The patent says iOS would try to analyse information from apps, sensors, location, and interactions like screen on/off, adapter plugged in etc to determine what a use is trying to do, and accordingly adjust the performance and power efficiency of the device.
Apple further explains that the OS could monitor user’s activities in apps via APIs to improve power management. To illustrate the usefulness of the data, Apple takes the example of Passbook:
Presenting a boarding pass for checking into a flight on a plane tells the power management system that the user is likely going to be in airplane mode for the duration of the flight. When in the near future the user enables airplane mode, the power management system can infer that the user will want their device’s battery to last for the duration of the flight, and will not have access to power until after the flight. The power management system could respond by sacrificing some performance in favor of stretching the battery to last for the duration of the flight. By using the fact that the user has checked in for a flight, and the metadata from the boarding pass, the power management system is gets two data points for airplane mode and a likely duration.Another example could be using Passbook to purchase a drink at a coffee house. This coupled with GPS location largely staying the same would suggest that the user will be enjoying their drink in the coffee house for the next 20 to 30 minutes. If they should be using their device in that time period they are likely to be doing so intently, (reading the news, playing a game, etc.), such that they would like their device to be particularly responsive. This sort of information could tell the power management system that for the next 20-30 minutes it is in the user’s best interest to sacrifice some battery life in favor of improved performance.
Apple highlights several such examples in the patent application, where the OS automatically tunes performance and power consumption, without needing any explicit action from the user. The company already does similar usage analysis for iOS 7’s new Background App Refresh, to learn how frequently to refresh an app’s data on the iPhone, and this seems like a natural extension of this predictive technology.
While it’s great that Apple’s working on these solutions, I’d want the company to let users create profiles like “Battery Saver”, “Full performance” etc. that can be switched between easily without having to flip tens of settings toggles.
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