Device-Sphere Manager for Multi-Device State Synchronization
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Solution Overview
Problem
The challenge is to provide seamless continuity of a user's experience across multiple devices in a device-sphere, where data and application states are not efficiently synchronized, requiring manual steps to access data on one device from another.
Innovation Solution
A device-sphere manager coordinates devices to maintain and propagate changes across all devices, creating and updating device images that include application records, data, and desktop states, ensuring that changes made on one device are reflected on others, allowing for quick access and synchronization of data and application states.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Speed
If devices are connected through a computer network, then communication capability between devices is improved, but data synchronization and state continuity across devices deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the states of multiple devices into a unified device-sphere state managed by a central manager. The manager maintains a comprehensive state representation that includes data, application states, and user preferences from all devices, enabling automatic synchronization across the device sphere without requiring manual intervention or complex peer-to-peer coordination protocols.
Solution Approach 2:
The device-sphere manager acts as an intermediary between devices, receiving state change notifications from devices and propagating relevant changes to other devices. This mediator architecture simplifies the synchronization problem by centralizing state management logic, eliminating the need for devices to directly coordinate with each other and ensuring consistent state propagation across the network.
2Ease of operation
If manual steps are required to access data on one device from another, then data security and device independence are improved, but user experience continuity deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables self-service data access where the device-sphere manager automatically handles data retrieval and propagation without requiring user intervention. When data is added or modified on one device, the manager automatically detects the change, updates the unified state, and propagates the data to other devices in the sphere, making the process transparent and seamless for the user.
Solution Approach 2:
The device-sphere manager performs preliminary actions by pre-synchronizing device states and maintaining up-to-date representations of all device data. This allows devices to quickly access and share content without manual intervention, as the synchronization infrastructure is already in place and actively maintaining state consistency across the device sphere.
3Productivity
If device states are fully synchronized across all devices, then user experience continuity is improved, but network bandwidth consumption and system complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the complexity of state synchronization from individual devices and concentrates it in the device-sphere manager. The manager maintains the comprehensive state representation and handles all synchronization logic, while devices only need to communicate state changes to the manager. This extraction simplifies device implementation and reduces network overhead by eliminating redundant synchronization protocols.
Solution Approach 2:
The system implements feedback mechanisms where devices notify the manager of state changes, and the manager propagates relevant changes back to other devices. This feedback loop ensures continuous synchronization without requiring constant polling or complex coordination, as devices only communicate when their state actually changes, reducing network bandwidth consumption while maintaining user experience continuity.
Data Source
AI summary
Devices of an individual's device-sphere cooperate with a device-sphere manager to improve continuity of the user's experience using any of the devices. When a device's state changes, the device reports the change to the device-sphere manager. The device-sphere manager modifies the device image for the reporting device and informs other devices of the device-sphere that corresponding changes should be made in the other devices as well. Each device image includes application records representing applications installed in the subject device. The device image for each device also includes partition images of each of one or more partitions of persistent storage of the device. A data image for the device-sphere represents data shared among the constituent devices of the device-sphere.