I recently looked at the potential of Bluetooth 4 to experience a renaissance in popularity now that the communications protocol is optimized to use less power. And Bluetooth isn’t the only communications technology where power is of increasing concern.

GigaOM’s Kevin Fitchard reports on the Nexus 5 and its radio enhancements geared at lowering the phone’s power draw:

Qualcomm’s envelope tracker, called the QFE1100, debuted in the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, making the Nexus 5 the second phone we know of to use the technology. Basically, the tracker matches the power fed into the signal amplifier to the power transmitted from the phone. Sounds simple, but it’s actually a very difficult thing to accomplish especially on LTE smartphones, which eat up far more power in their signal amplifiers than 3G or 2G devices.

The whole idea is to optimize RF chips so that they’re less and less of a power problem on phones. Power issues with LTE phones are common, and Qualcomm’s focus on building an envelop tracker is another sign of the value of producing a low power chip that includes an improved architecture. As the internet of things continues to produce loads of connected sensors and devices, significant advances in producing connectivity at lower and lower power draws will be critical to achieve.