fig2 a the processor 304 adjusts the sleep durations and wakeups according to the amount of time the mobile station spends in a ready state waiting for a timer to expire once the timer expires the inter slot cycle sleep duration is increased in other embodiments the wakeup intervals are adjusted according to some adaptive function of the number of clock cycles from the last wakeup event for example the adaptive function can be selected to optimize the system response to the key presses and other i o activities the expiration time register 306 contains the pre specified expiration time for the timer 308 when the timer 308 reaches the value stored in the expiration time register 306 the signal generator generates a signal to the call processor 314 to transition the mobile station into a relax state having longer sleep periods fig4 is a flowchart of the adaptive process for adjustment of sleep duration according to one embodiment of the present system the process begins in an initial state if user or remote input is received at step 400 a timer is started at step 402 at step 404 the mobile station is transitioned into a ready state in which the inter slot cycle sleep durations are relatively short thus the timer indicates how long the mobile station should remain in this ready state once the mobile station enters the ready state the mobile station is periodically transitioned into and out of a sleep.