Has your iPhone’s battery been lasting longer through the day since you updated to iOS 4.2.1? There may be a reason for that: Apple’s using network-controlled fast dormancy in iOS 4.2 to better optimize the way in which the iPhone connects to the cell network, which results in a noticeable bump in battery life.
The revelation comes from Nokia Siemens, one of the world’s major suppliers of cellular infrastructure, who note that while they’ve gotten no official acknowledgement from Apple that iOS 4.2 support network-controlled fast dormancy, they’ve noticed it in action in tests that they have performed.
It’s a nice feature to see introduced, as hard to notice as it is. Network-controlled fast dormancy is a feature that benefits the health of the network as a whole while helping to eliminate a lot of the same sort of congestion problems AT&T customers have certainly had it up to their necks in by now.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
