1. A method practiced by a battery-powered mobile wireless communications device equipped with a camera and microphone, the device having multiple recognition modes for recognizing multiple types of content, the method comprising the acts: initiating one or more stages of a first recognition agent process to recognize audio or image content data captured by the mobile device, the first recognition agent process performing a recognition selected from a list consisting of: image watermark recognition, image recognition, object recognition, facial recognition, barcode recognition, optical character recognition, audio watermark recognition, speech recognition, speaker recognition, or music recognition; receiving detection state data indicating a state of the first recognition agent process in performing the selected recognition; after initiating the first recognition agent process, receiving first user interest data indicating interest of the user in obtaining a result of the first recognition agent process; and varying an allocation of processing resources to the first recognition agent process based on both said detection state data and on said user interest data; the method thereby optimizing use of the device battery by allocating processing resources in response both to the state of the first recognition agent process in performing the selected recognition, and to user input received after the first recognition agent process has been initiated, indicating user interest in the result of the first recognition agent process.