Voice Calls Over 4G LTE Networks Are Battery Killers
Summary
Metrico Wireless, a radio field testing company Spirent acquired in September, conducted voice trials on a commercial VoLTE-enabled network in two U.S. cities, comparing the power consumption of VoIP calls made over LTE against the power used by the same carrier’s CDMA systems. What it comes down to is that our old GSM and CDMA circuit-switched voice technologies—despite their limitations—have been optimized over the past two decades to be energy-efficient, Spirent Global Director of Insights Amit Malhotra told GigaOM in an e-mail interview. Another is the use of less power-efficient components such as data modems vs. voice transceivers.” If this proves to be typical for VoLTE handsets, it will be a big problem. The battery life of the first generation of LTE smartphones was atrocious, and handset vendors have tried to address the problem by slapping fat 3,000+ mAh power cells onto their phones. “These issues will be mitigated over time, especially as components continue to become more power-efficient and devices do not need to switch between different modes of voice call processing,” Malhotra said.
Classifications
AskAI Classifications
LabelsLinked Companies
