Apple Inc.

Jesse Yu

Ronald William Dimpflmaier

Nicholas W Lum

William Jean Noellert

A field testing system is provided that uses a personal computer tethered to an interface board. A cellular telephone plugs into the interface board during wireless field testing. The cellular telephone may include configurable multiplexer circuitry and power supply circuitry. During normal operation, the cellular telephone is configured so that its application processor is linked to its application processor and to an external bus. During field testing, the cellular telephone is configured to link the baseband unit to the external bus and the interface board. The baseband unit may support advanced communications busses (e.g., USB). To avoid consuming too many pins in the external bus between the interface board and the cellular telephone, power for the USB bus during field testing may be derived from a power management unit in the cellular telephone.

Cellular telephones with configurable multiplexer circuitry and local bus power for field testing

An electronic device has wireless communications circuitry that supports communications using multiple radio access technologies. The electronic device may gather information such as data rate values, power consumption values, and other data for a currently active radio access technology and an alternative radio access technology. The electronic device may automatically switch between the currently active radio access technology and the alternative radio access technology based on a value of a data rate efficiency metric. The data rate efficiency metric may represent how efficiently each radio access technology is capable of using power to convey a given amount of data per unit time. The data rate efficiency metric may be evaluated using measured power consumption data, measured data rate values, and operating parameters such as signal strength and transmitted power parameters.

Method for optimizing power consumption in wireless devices using data rate efficiency factor

Portable user devices are provided that communicate wirelessly with base stations. A user device may include a transceiver, a power amplifier, a voltage supply, and a global positioning system (GPS) unit. The device may transmit signals at a certain transmit power to a neighboring base station. The device may log the time spent transmitting at each power level. Each data point may be tagged with the current location of the device. The logs of each device may be aggregated by a power optimization server. The power optimization server may calculate optimum power settings for each region and for each type of device. A region may be any desirable size ranging from the size of a single cell to an entire continent. Device users may download updated optimum settings. A device may automatically detect and select the optimum transmit power setting during operation depending on its current location.

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San Jose, CA, United States of America

Jesse Yu