Many of today's high tech consumer products include a power savings program. In portable devices, the power savings program may play an important role in minimizing user inconvenience, by extending time between recharges.
Typically, when a user stops providing input to a device for more than a particular period of time, the device may enter a power savings mode, in which the device cuts off power from being delivered to certain components. Subsequently, upon detecting additional user input (e.g., a tap on a keypad), the device may restore power to the components.
In some instances, however, the device entering the power savings mode can hinder the user from using the device without interruptions. To cope with such a situation, some devices allow the user to modify the time the device may wait until it enters the power savings mode. However, such configurability may not be convenient for several reasons, e.g., many users may not be able to find menus or mechanisms to change the wait time; users may forget to reset the wait time, resulting in premature power drain; users may find it difficult to set an ideal wait time for the device; some users may expect the device to work well out-of-the-box, etc.
Other devices that do not allow the users to change the wait time suffer from lack of flexibility to deal with individual characteristics of each user, such as different reading speed, user reaction times, etc. In other devices, an ideal wait time for one user may be different from that of another user.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds