If you frequently use Wi-Fi tethering with your Windows Phone to get an internet connection on your latop or Surface, Microsoft’s latest patent might allow you to be able to do it for longer without burning through your battery.
A patent named “Power Saving Wi-Fi Tethering” was spotted by the British news site Express. It describes an intelligent software that analyzes and predicts your usage patterns and how often you need an internet connection on your tethered device. When the software’s analysis concludes that you don’t need a tethered connection it will signal to your Windows Phone that it is time to not work so hard and take a break. But if you go back to needing a Wi-Fi connection, the software will theoretically wake your phone back up to seamlessly provide a connection.
The benefit of this patented technology is your phone is not always on and burning through its battery to be a constant hotspot while you work on the go. And while Power Saving Wi-Fi Tethering is just a patent, and has to accordingly be taken with a grain of salt, the seamless handoff is in line with other recently announced Windows 10 features.
This patent’s optimizing of data and battery usage between devices sounds very familiar to other hand-off like features expected with the Windows 10 Anniversary update. But unlike features such as Android notifications and texts coming to your Windows 10 PC, this feature could most likely only work with a Windows Phone since putting the device to sleep or changing Wi-Fi settings would require deeper OS integration between the two devices.
Maybe we will hear more about this and other hand-off like features between Windows 10 Mobile and Windows 10 as the Anniversary Update approaches, or still even possibly this new patent is being reserved for future Surface Phones. Unfortunately for us, tech companies file patents all the time that never see the light of day commercially, so we might have to wait some time to know more.
