When it comes to our smartphones our biggest complaint is that the battery life is not enough for some of our needs. If only manufacturers could master the battery and make it last longer our lives would be better, right? Well ST-Ericsson may have a solution!
Yesterday, they released details through a PDF on VoLTE with “Next-Generation” device radios and how it could save our power consumption. The new VoLTE technology is “targeted toward CDMA+LTE carriers.” For those of you who may not know what carriers those are, it would be MetroPCS, Verizon, and Sprint.
One of the biggest issues with LTE currently is the fact the radio doesn’t do what is called a “dual-mode operation” where the both the “1X Voice and LTE data” connect. Instead they must go back and “forth between CDMA 1X and LTE” and the end result is that it drains the battery in the process. Why does this happen? CDMA2000 networks aren’t provided with “simultaneous voice and data (SV-LTE and SV-DO), and this in the end strains our battery performance
What are ST-Ericsson’s plans on improving this issue? Since most devices have to “run separate hardware and software systems” Ericsson would like to implement VoLTE to be “entirely” dealt within the “application processing realm.” This means there wouldn’t be an “application processor” and then a “modem processor” which is used for the radio processes, and “multimedia encoding/decoding.”
VoLTE and WCDMA is a technology that was introduced to us last year by Qualcomm and Ericsson in February, with a video a month later by LG showing off “Video calling over LTE using the same system that uses voice over LTE uses.” MetroPCS followed suite by deploying VoLTE technology in Dallas, Texas and has started to incorporate their devices with the needed hardware for VoLTE.
Ericsson goes on to explain this process even further, but we will leave this for the real device gurus to look into and read for themselves in the PDF provided below, since there are a lot of things involved in this that many may not understand. In the end VoLTE is said to improve our power consumption by 50%, which would be a significant save on the battery.
Soon VoLTE will be the next ‘big thing.’ The main contenders for this technology will be MectroPCS who have already started deploying VoLTE, and then Verizon Wireless because they realize soon that devices in the future with LTE may not be able to use the CDMA2000 network. Another big suggestion made was that those who are not able to get 3G network will have a great opportunity here to make the switch “to LTE completely.”
Now I know this may be a lot to take in, and if you don’t understand please don’t try as it can be some complicated stuff if you do not understand the mobile technology area. Being an IT graduate, I can understand this, but I will say from experience, that it wasn’t something I got right away. It took some time to understand with lots of research and reading and I still only understand the basics.
What I can tell you is this could be a great technology, but that is what they said about LTE, so I am slightly skeptical.
Has anyone heard of the VoLTE technology? Is there anyone excited to see this switch to help improve battery life? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
Sources: Extreme Tech / St Ericsson (PDF)