No kidding. It'd be great if this evolved to where half or more of phones in a nearby vicinity could completely shutdown their cellular radio and use the mesh network for connectivity, saving (on average) lots of battery life and providing more reliable service for all.
How much power do you expect to save? I mean, standard star topology WiFi uses less power than a 3G radio. But you don't access a mesh network, you are part of a mesh network. Your radio will be constantly relaying information. Sounds pretty power-hungry to me.
It's a lot like BitTorrent, where on average everyone must seed as much as they leech, except in this case every packet is relayed N times. So for a healthy network, everyone must relay N times as much as they consume.
No kidding. It'd be great if this evolved to where half or more of phones in a nearby vicinity could completely shutdown their cellular radio and use the mesh network for connectivity, saving (on average) lots of battery life and providing more reliable service for all.