WiFi 'napping' doubles phone battery life

Very interesting, although you can manually do that yourself.

 

I think this is a great idea and if widely implemented, could be very effective, at least in crowded environments.

But "double" battery life? No way!!!! That would assume the Wifi hardware is, BY FAR, the greatest power consumer in the device. While the transmitter side of the Wifi does likely eat a lot of power, it does so in quick bursts. It is not constantly transmitting. Notebooks and phones receive data in MUCH greater amounts than they transmit, but it takes very little power to run a receiver.

Illuminating a bright display screen, however, is a major power draw, as is running the main processor.

So while this new process may have an impact on a battery's discharge rate, the claim of doubling it is not believable. A 50% increase, not 200% is more believable to me, and still a significant accomplishment.

I wish they posted some actual test results.