Recent Microsoft Patents: Battery With Computing Capabilties, Power Saving Wi-Fi Tethering Device And More

I came across few interesting patents from Microsoft that got published by the USPTO recently. Below are the some of them with their abstract content.

BATTERY WITH COMPUTING, SENSING AND COMMUNICATION CAPABILTIES

Electrical battery apparatus embodiments are presented that generally involve incorporating sensing, computing, and communication capabilities into the one common component that a vast number of electronic devices employ–namely batteries. By integrating these capabilities into disposable and/or rechargeable batteries, new functionality and intelligence can be provided to otherwise stand-alone devices.

POWER SAVING WI-FI TETHERING

The techniques discussed herein reduce the power consumption of a Wi-Fi tethering device by switching the Wi-Fi functionality of the Wi-Fi tethering device from a normal operational mode to a sleep mode during idle intervals. The techniques implement a sleep protocol where a Wi-Fi tethering device and the Wi-Fi client device coordinate and establish a sleep schedule. Moreover, the techniques describe a sleep interval adaptation algorithm to establish sleep duration intervals based on data packet exchange patterns associated with different applications executing on the Wi-Fi client device and/or different operations being performed by the Wi-Fi client device

LOCAL VOICEMAIL FOR MOBILE DEVICES

This document describes various techniques for implementing local voicemail on a mobile device. These techniques may include enabling the mobile device to answer a voice call, record audio of the voice call to provide a voicemail file, and store the voicemail file to local computer-readable media. A locally stored voicemail file may be associated with relevant data, exposed via the associated data for local processing, and/or manipulated through a user interface of the mobile device.

TILTABLE USER INTERFACE

A programmable effects system for graphical user interfaces is disclosed. One embodiment comprises adjusting a graphical user interface in response to a tilt of a device. In this way, a graphical user interface may display a parallax effect in response to the device tilt.

CHANGING OF LIST VIEWS ON MOBILE DEVICE

Various embodiments related to a hand-held mobile computing device are disclosed. One disclosed embodiment comprises a hand-held mobile computing device having a touch-sensitive display forming a surface of the hand-held mobile computing device configured to receive touch input. The hand-held mobile computing device further comprises a processor and memory comprising code executable by the processor to display a scrollable list of items in a first content viewing mode having a first set of content for each of the items in the scrollable list, to detect a dynamic multi-touch gesture over the scrollable list of items, and to change the scrollable list of items to a second content viewing mode responsive to detection of the dynamic multi-touch gesture, wherein the second content viewing mode comprises a second set of content for each item in the scrollable list of items.