US 9,086,875 · Granted 2015-07-21

The Patent That Reads Your Jogger's Pocket to Save Battery

Your phone can sense when you're jogging with it, when you slip it into your pocket, or when you're not using it—and automatically dial down power to the main processor to save battery. It's like your phone getting smarter about when to work hard and when to chill.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a system where motion and environmental sensors on a mobile device detect specific user behaviors (jogging, pocketing the phone, etc.) and automatically switch the main processor to a lower-power mode based on what's detected. What's protected here is the combination of sensor monitoring, gesture recognition, power profile selection, and the automatic handoff to a power management controller—essentially the logic that ties user activity to processor power consumption.

Why it matters

Battery life is the perennial bottleneck in mobile devices. This patent locks down a straightforward but effective approach: instead of letting the processor run full-speed all the time, have dedicated sensors detect when the phone isn't in active use and throttle the main CPU accordingly. Qualcomm, a chipmaker that powers billions of phones, owns this—meaning competitors who want to use motion-aware power management need to either license it or design around it.

Real-world use

When you drop your phone in your pocket while jogging, the accelerometer detects the pattern and your phone's main processor throttles down, burning less battery even though you're not looking at the screen.

Original USPTO abstract

In an embodiment, a mobile device includes a sensor processor system, an application processor system and a power management controller that controls power being applied to the application processor system. The sensor processor system monitors sensors connected to the mobile device. The sensor processor system detects a pre-defined gestures and an environmental condition or event based on the monitoring. The pre-defined gesture corresponds to one or more actions initiated by a user of the mobile device (e.g., the user jogs with the mobile device, places the mobile device in his/her pocket or backpack, etc.). The sensor processor system selects a power profile to be applied to the application processor system based on the detection, and instructs the power management controller to apply the selected power profile to the application processor system.

Patent details

Publication number: US 9,086,875
Filing date: 2010-06-02
Grant date: 2015-07-21
Assignee: Qualcomm Incorporated
Inventor(s): HARRAT NEWFEL, SHEYNBLAT LEONID
CPC class: G06F1/3203

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