Spirent Communications has launched Quantum, an automated system for measuring and driving improvements to the battery life of mobile devices. Quantum is the industry’s first user experience analytics system to automatically execute consumer use cases on a mobile device while performing synchronized power consumption measurements.
The adoption of 4G applications such as VoLTE, video chat, streaming video, multi-player gaming and more comes at a cost – bigger screens, faster application processors and higher throughput modems are driving mobile device power consumption way up. In response, device makers have moved to higher capacity batteries, in many cases accommodated by larger device sizes. However, the trend toward larger batteries is peaking as space, heat and cost limitations come into play. As a result, the mobile industry is shifting its attention to the power efficiency of mobile devices and chipsets.
“Our studies show that mobile devices with the best power efficiency outperform the worst by 50 to 70 percent depending on the use case, which is why we see a real opportunity for device makers and chipset providers to improve power efficiency and create a better overall mobile user experience,” said Des Owens, general manager, Service Experience at Spirent Communications. “With Quantum, mobile operators, device makers and chipset providers can make true apples-to-apples comparisons of power consumption across devices and chipsets. Quantum’s use-case-based approach enables device and component makers to understand the real-world battery life of new products, identify component and design weaknesses and make improvements to power efficiency.”
Conducting large numbers of battery life test cases manually, especially complex tests, is usually cost and time prohibitive. As a result, manual test results seldom provide an accurate indicator of real-world battery life performance. Quantum allows thousands of tests to run automatically, ensuring power consumption and battery life measurements are statistically robust, repeatable and highly realistic with respect to real-world performance. Quantum is part of Spirent’s market-leading suite of user experience analytics solutions which include speech, call, web browsing, file transfer, video and battery life analytics.
