Mobile terminal
Patent No. US7577417 (titled "Mobile terminal") on Jul 6, 2006. The application was issued on Aug 18, 2009.
What is this patent about?
’417 is related to the field of mobile device power management and clock frequency control. Specifically, it addresses the inherent trade-off between high-speed computational performance and the preservation of battery life in portable electronics like cellular phones.
The underlying idea behind ’417 is that a mobile device can intelligently manage its energy consumption by tying the processor's clock speed to the physical state of the device and the specific nature of the task being performed. By recognizing that a user’s need for high-speed responsiveness changes when a phone is folded shut, the system can aggressively throttle the clock frequency to save power without sacrificing perceived performance.
The claims of ’417 focus on a mobile terminal with a folding mechanism that utilizes a clock controller to dynamically adjust the processor's operating frequency based on whether the device is in an open or closed condition. The system defaults to a lower frequency when the device is closed to conserve energy, but it includes a specific override mechanism that boosts the frequency to a higher level if a specific processing task is triggered while the device remains closed.
In practice, the invention works by monitoring the mechanical state of the chassis and the active software load. When the terminal is unfolded, it operates at a high frequency to ensure a smooth user interface; when folded, it drops to a power-saving state. However, if the device needs to perform intensive background tasks—such as image decoding or address retrieval—the clock controller temporarily ramps up the speed to complete the task efficiently before returning to the low-power baseline.
This approach differs from prior solutions that relied solely on application-level requests or environmental factors like temperature and voltage. By integrating folding condition detection with task-specific frequency boosting, the invention ensures that the device remains responsive for background operations while maximizing battery longevity during periods when the user is not actively interacting with the primary display.
How does this patent fit in bigger picture?
Technical Landscape
In the early 2000s when ’417 was filed, mobile communication devices were typically implemented using fixed-frequency oscillators where central processing unit clock speeds were statically defined or managed automatically by the operating system. At a time when power management was primarily driven by hardware-level triggers such as voltage thresholds or thermal sensors, system architectures commonly relied on application-level logic to request performance shifts rather than providing direct user-facing controls for hardware frequency scaling. During this era, the limited energy density of mobile power cells made the continuous operation of high-frequency processing non-trivial, as automated scaling often prioritized performance at the expense of battery longevity without visibility into the user's immediate operational priorities.
Prosecution Position
The disclosed invention addresses the technical conflict between high-speed data processing requirements and the finite energy constraints of mobile terminals through a user-interposed clock control architecture. By integrating a clock control mechanism that allows for the manual conversion of the central processing unit’s operating frequency, the system shifts from purely reactive power management to a user-defined performance profile. This architectural shift enables a mobile device to overcome the constraint of premature battery depletion by allowing the operator to selectively authorize high-frequency cycles only when necessary, thereby achieving a technical balance between computational throughput and current consumption that is not possible through automated, sensor-dependent scaling alone.
Claims
The patent contains a total of 7 claims, with claim 1 serving as the sole independent claim. This independent claim focuses on a mobile terminal equipped with a clock controller that adjusts the processor's clock frequency based on whether the device is in an open or closed state, while specifically allowing for a higher frequency during certain tasks even when the device is closed. The dependent claims serve to further define the specific types of processing that trigger frequency changes, provide mechanisms for user-defined frequency settings, and incorporate hardware features such as visual displays for frequency status and specific physical device structures.
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US7577417
- Application Number
- US11480971A
- Filing Date
- Jul 6, 2006
- Publication Date
- Aug 18, 2009
- External Links
- Slate, USPTO , Google Patents