Patent ID: 8356199

Claim:
A power management system in a portable computing device, the portable computing device including a plurality of subsystems including hardware resources, the power management system comprising: a battery having a plurality of logical battery partitions coupled to the plurality of subsystems; a first battery variable provided to a first subsystem of the plurality of subsystems to indicate a first characteristic of a first logical battery partition of the plurality of logical partitions, the first characteristic indicating whether power is available to the first subsystem; a second battery variable provided to a second subsystem of the plurality of subsystems to indicate a second characteristic of a second logical battery partition of the plurality of logical partitions, the second characteristic indicating whether power is available to the second subsystem; and a user interface providing a control to set a first priority of the first subsystem and a second priority of the second subsystem, wherein the first characteristic indicates whether power is available to the first subsystem based upon the first priority.