Reducing cellphone power consumption: US Pat. No. 7,692,612

U.S. Patent No. 7,692,612, issued on April 6, 2010 to Moxair, Inc. of Newport Beach, CA, discloses a method of power management for an LCD display device.

The patent discloses that for many portable electronic devices (e.g., cell phones), the largest drain on battery power is the display.  As an example, a backlit thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid-crystal display (LCD) can consume more than 30% of the cellphone’s power, and the backlight can consume 75% of the display power.  The method and system disclosed by the patent are designed to minimize power consumption of the display by calculating pixel values to be used with a reduced backlight intensity while still meeting an image-quality requirement.

According to Moxair’s website, the company’s “patent-pending video processing technology … enables 50% increase in battery life on mobile devices while maintaining the highest in video quality.”  Moxair’s business model includes licensing its image and video enhancement intellectual property, and working with its partners to integrate Moxair’s technology into the partner’s platform.  Assuming the ’612 patent covers Moxair’s technology, they will soon be changing “patent-pending” to “patented.”