Notes from the Boston Linux Power Management Mini-summit

That's not fundamental to the design of Android though. If some hardware is capable of keeping the screen on during suspend (as current phones are capable of keeping the audio device on, for example), or if it has an eBook style display which can continue displaying without powering the screen, then the policy could be changed as appropriate.

This sort of scenario came up a few times in the recent suspend blocker discussion on LKML.