What is the effect on BlackBerry 8820 battery life when associated to a Wi-Fi network

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What is the effect on BlackBerry 8820 battery life when associated to a home Wi-Fi network compared to an enterprise Wi-Fi network


Doc ID : KB13559
Last Modified : 2007-07-18
Document Type : What Is

Environment

• BlackBerry® 8820 smartphone

Details

The BlackBerry 8820 smartphone incorporates many technologies and capabilities that ensure the BlackBerry smartphone user experience is at the highest possible level. When connecting to a Wi-Fi® network, the performance of the BlackBerry 8820 smartphone will depend on signal strength, signal quality, and the configuration of the Wi-Fi network.

Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM) Power Save

A major challenge to integrating Wi-Fi technology in mobile devices is the impact on battery life. The Wi-Fi Alliance has developed a certification program for the interoperability of features for Wi-Fi networks that improve battery life for audio, video, and voice applications. This program is called Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM®) Power Save. The BlackBerry 8820 supports legacy IEEE 802.11 power-save modes as well as certified for WMM Power Save.

WMM Power Save is a solution well suited to Wi-Fi technology deployment as it allows devices to spend more time in a dormant state, which consumes less power and improves performance by minimizing transmission latency.

Using WMM Power Save

Wi-Fi Alliance estimates that WMM Power Save can provide from 15% to 40% improvement in battery life depending on the application characteristics. WMM Power Save will activate automatically when the BlackBerry 8820 smartphone is communicating with a WMM Power Save access point.

The battery life of the BlackBerry 8820 smartphone improves while associated to an enterprise's Wi-Fi network deployed with WMM Power Save access points compared to connecting to a home Wi-Fi network or hotspot that does not support WMM Power Save.

Additional Information

At present, most consumer Wi-Fi access points do not support WMM Power Save. Check with your access point specifications to determine what is supported.