Adaptive neighboring cell measurement scaling by a wireless user equipment (UE) device. The UE may operate alternately in active and inactive states in a periodic manner according to DRX cycle timing for each of a plurality of DRX cycles. Paging messages may be checked for while in the active state during each DRX cycle. If a paging message is received, it may be decoded using a joint detection technique. The UE may adaptively determine whether or not to perform neighboring cell measurements during at least a subset of the DRX cycles, and perform neighboring cell measurements according to the adaptive determination. The adaptive determination may be based on one or more of joint detection of paging messages, one or more previous cell measurements, or an amount of motion of the UE.