MANAGING POWER CONSUMPTION ON AN ELECTRONIC DEVICE
In one aspect, in general, a method includes, based on a first indication of an amount of battery life of a battery-powered device, calculating a first polling interval for an electronic communication application running on the battery-powered device.
1 . A method comprising
based on a first indication of an amount of battery life of a battery-powered device, calculating a first polling interval for an electronic communication application running on the battery-powered device.
2 . The method of claim 1 in which the first polling interval is calculated based on a stored polling profile.
3 . The method of claim 1 , in which the electronic communication application is an email client.
4 . The method of claim 1 comprising receiving a second indication of an amount of battery life of the battery-powered device, the second indication indicating a smaller amount of battery life than the first indication,
based on the second indication, calculating a second polling interval for the electronic communication application, the second polling interval being less frequent than the first polling interval.
5 . The method of claim 1 , in which the first polling interval is calculated based on a frequency at which the electronic communication application receives communications.
6 . The method of claim 1 , in which the first polling interval is calculated based on a user preference indicating a ratio of battery life to polling frequency.
7 . The method of claim 1 , in which the first polling interval is calculated based on an indication of a communications network to which the battery-powered device is connected.
8 . The method of claim 1 , in which the first polling interval is calculated based on an indication of signal strength of a connection of the battery-powered device to a communications network.
9 . The method of claim 1 , comprising transmitting a query to another device at a time determined by the polling interval.
10 . The method of claim 1 in which the first polling interval is calculated based on an application of the first indication to a non-linear function.
11 . The method of claim 1 in which the first polling interval is calculated based on an application of the first indication to a linear function.
12 . The method of claim 1 in which the first polling interval is calculated based on an application of the first indication to a step function.
13 . The method of claim 1 in which the first polling interval is calculated based on an application of the first indication to a function containing a constant value.
14 . The method of claim 1 in which the constant value is determined based on at least one characteristic of the battery-powered device.
15 . The method of claim 1 , in which the first polling interval is calculated based on a frequency of manual polling initiated by a user of the battery-powered device.
16 . The method of claim 1 , comprising calculating a second polling interval based on a change in a characteristic of the battery-powered device.
17 . A system comprising:
a battery-powered device configured to, based on a first indication of an amount of battery life of a battery-powered device, calculate a first polling interval for an electronic communication application running on the battery-powered device.
18 . A computer readable storage device storing a computer program product comprising machine-readable instructions that, when executed, cause a computer system to carry out operations comprising:
based on a first indication of an amount of battery life of a battery-powered device, calculating a first polling interval for an electronic communication application running on the battery-powered device.