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Less Mobile Bandwidth and More Mobile Battery Life

Andy Capp

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There are two striking differences between Desktop PCs and Mobile Devices. The first is that extra bandwidth is usually very economic for desktop PCs. On the other hand, extra bandwidth for mobile devices can in some cases be punitive. The energy source is an even bigger differentiator. Energy for desktop PCs is readily available without limit and at very low cost. For mobile devices, a very limited and finite energy source is provided. These two differences should be uppermost in the web designer’s mind as they design for these two worlds.

What this all boils down to is the need to ideally deliver to mobile devices only the content/bandwidth they can use. This suggests an important step in delivering Web content to mobile devices. The ‘One Web‘ approach states that a single URI should deliver satisfactory user experiences whatever device is being used.

Current thinking is that two steps are involved in this. The first is device detection by the server. Once some essential parameters of the device are detected, this will help the server determine how the URI content should be best served to that device.

The next step is what is called adaptation. Through this the server will adapt the URI content to be most suitable for that device.

If the bandwidth/battery concerns discussed earlier are important, this adaptation process should deliver very much less of that URI content to a cell phone than it does to a desktop PC. This differentiation will mean that from the same URI, a cell phone will download very much less than will the desktop PC.

If this is a correct description of the adaptation process, the question of whether these vastly different devices receive very different versions of the same URI content or different associated URIs seems almost a matter of personal choice. This is why the Multi-Web approach with associated URIs recorded in a AGI (Array of Graphic Identifiers) is being suggested. It involves fewer technical challenges and is a much more robust approach.

For example, a very simple approach would be to have the AGI include 5 URLs providing optimized content for 5 typical devices such as

Type Screen Width in pixels
High-res Desktop (PC) 1280
Low-res Desktop (PC) 800
PDA - larger 480
PDA - smaller 320
Cell phone 160

The ‘Crunch’ questions on this boil down to the following:

  1. Should bandwidth concerns limit the URI content delivered to very small mobile devices?
  2. Should battery capacity concerns limit the URI content delivered to very small mobile devices?
  3. Given the answers to either 1 or 2, should adaptation deliver different URI content to different devices?
  4. If the answer to 3 is affirmative, is the Multi-Web approach a reasonable alternate to the One-Web Principle?

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