Scientists claim to have designed a network proxy which can cut the power consumption of 3G smartphones up to 74 percent. A team at Aalto University in Finland says its device enhances performance and significantly reduces power usage by serving as a middleman for mobile devices to connect to the internet and handling the majority of the data transfer for the smartphone. Historically, the high energy requirements of mobile phones have slowed the adoption of mobile internet services in developing countries.

This new solution is particularly valuable in developing countries because it provides significantly more effective internet access to a much larger number of people, according to the scientists. "Mobile phone usage is increasing rapidly, however the use of mobile internet services is hindered by users not having access to the power grid to recharge their phones," said Prof Jukka Manner, who led the team. The case study conducted at Aalto University examined internet usage in three East African countries -- Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya.

The scientists developed energy-saving solutions for smartphones that could be easily deployed across a mobile network and in particular in areas without reliable sources of electricity. In addition to the new, optimised proxy solution, they found that the power consumption of smartphones could also be significantly reduced by mobile optimised websites, HTTP compression and more efficient use of data caching.