Microsoft Research

Battery life is a major issue for wearable technology. Period. Companies such as Pebble and Misfit have found a market niche due to their extremely long battery life versus the competition. But if all things were equal in term of power, it is likely that more people would opt for a full featured smartwatch. A finding by Microsoft Research might be moving us closer to that reality. A team working on the company’s WearDrive project has found a novel way to increase battery life by over 3x while speeding up application load time by almost 9x. The basic idea is to reduce the amount of reading and writing being done to internal flash memory, instead utilizing Bluetooth LE to access and store the information on the connected phone. Specifically, the power savings comes from avoiding the device’s flash memory completely and directly streaming the data to / from the phone. Bluetooth LE is ideal because it uses just 1 to 2 milliwatts of power and the technique was found to have only a negligible effect on the phone’s battery life. Unfortunately, this research is going to stay in Microsoft’s labs for the time being. The company currently has no plans to integrate the WearDrive findings into the Microsoft Band or any other wearable.

In the publication of the findings, Ranveer Chandra, a lead on the project, stated that one of the biggest issues with wearables up until this point is that “everyone has been thinking of reusing what exists for mobile devices.” Just because one way of handling information flow and storage work well for one device doesn’t mean it applies to other. With wearables Chandra thinks it is imperative to remember, “It’s a different paradigm. It’s a different usage scenario.”