3 ms·

Umm... smart phones do this? It's a big reason phones can last so long with serious power requirements. A big reason for the phone/mobile specific chipsets wa

Umm... smart phones do this? It's a big reason phones can last so long with serious power requirements. A big reason for the phone/mobile specific chipsets was to enable these features.

derekp7 12y ago
But what I'm still confused on -- if a pager can sit an listen to a signal for 2 - 4 weeks on a AA battery, why can't a phone (smart or otherwise) do the same thing? Or in other words, what specifically is there about listening for a "You have an incoming call" radio signal, that causes more power drain than listening for a "You have a page with this message contents" signal? For simplicity sake, lets assume even a dumb phone, with no internet -- just calls -- they never did have a fraction of the standby time of a pager.
- jobposter1234 12y ago
  Late to see this. But the answer to your question is because even though they are superficially accomplishing the same end result, they are not nearly doing the same thing. Your smartphone is running a full blown modern operating system, with all the processors and memory and store requirements. The pager is likely running a very lean embedded processor and doesn't have nearly the same energy requirements.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "if a pager can sit an listen to a signal for 2 - 4 weeks on a AA battery, why can't a phone (smart or otherwise) do the same thing?" They do. For example the iPhone 6 Plus lasts 16 days on standby. Remember they also have to listen for other messages (push notifications, local notifications, alarms, calendar events etc.). Regarding your dumb phone statement they had about the same standby time as the iPhone 6 Plus I mentioned but they had much smaller batteries and the battery technology (I guess) was much less developed. [1] https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-6/specs/ https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-6/specs/

3 ms·

Umm... smart phones do this? It's a big reason phones can last so long with serious power requirements. A big reason for the phone/mobile specific chipsets wa

by jobposter1234 12y ago

Umm... smart phones do this? It's a big reason phones can last so long with serious power requirements. A big reason for the phone/mobile specific chipsets was to enable these features.

derekp7 12y ago
But what I'm still confused on -- if a pager can sit an listen to a signal for 2 - 4 weeks on a AA battery, why can't a phone (smart or otherwise) do the same thing? Or in other words, what specifically is there about listening for a "You have an incoming call" radio signal, that causes more power drain than listening for a "You have a page with this message contents" signal? For simplicity sake, lets assume even a dumb phone, with no internet -- just calls -- they never did have a fraction of the standby time of a pager.
- jobposter1234 12y ago
  Late to see this. But the answer to your question is because even though they are superficially accomplishing the same end result, they are not nearly doing the same thing. Your smartphone is running a full blown modern operating system, with all the processors and memory and store requirements. The pager is likely running a very lean embedded processor and doesn't have nearly the same energy requirements.
- k-mcgrady 12y ago
  >> "if a pager can sit an listen to a signal for 2 - 4 weeks on a AA battery, why can't a phone (smart or otherwise) do the same thing?" They do. For example the iPhone 6 Plus lasts 16 days on standby. Remember they also have to listen for other messages (push notifications, local notifications, alarms, calendar events etc.). Regarding your dumb phone statement they had about the same standby time as the iPhone 6 Plus I mentioned but they had much smaller batteries and the battery technology (I guess) was much less developed. [1] https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-6/specs/ https://www.apple.com/uk/iphone-6/specs/