Forget world peace and global warming: Researchers have finally found a way to extend the life of smartphone batteries by up to an hour each day.
A team at the University of Waterloo in Canada developed a mobile app that reduces devices’ energy consumption without any significant impact on performance.
But iOS users will have to stick to bulky battery packs and tangled charging cables. According to a study published by the journal IEEE Access, the program is currently aimed only at Android handsets.
Split-view—the most prominent feature in Android Nougat 7.0—allows folks to run multiple windows and files at the same time, as on a desktop or laptop computer.
Forget world peace and global warming: Researchers have finally found a way to extend the life of smartphone batteries by up to an hour each day.
A team at the University of Waterloo in Canada developed a mobile app that reduces devices’ energy consumption without any significant impact on performance.
But iOS users will have to stick to bulky battery packs and tangled charging cables. According to a study published by the journal IEEE Access, the program is currently aimed only at Android handsets.
Split-view—the most prominent feature in Android Nougat 7.0—allows folks to run multiple windows and files at the same time, as on a desktop or laptop computer.
“This results in unnecessary energy drain,” co-author Kshirasagar Naik, a Waterloo professor of electrical and computer engineering, said in a statement.
“We have developed an app which users can install on their devices and use to reduce the brightness of non-critical applications,” he continued. “So, when you’re interacting with one application, the brightness of the other window goes down, thereby [reducing] the energy consumption on the device.”
In an experiment involving 200 smartphone users, the energy-saving technique extended battery life by 10 to 25 percent.
And while that might not sound like much, anyone who has ever watched their screen go black mid-social media update or lost a call to a dead battery will appreciate that extra boost—which could mean the difference between arriving at your Google Maps destination and getting lost in the dark.
“What happens now is that you put the phone on a charger for the night and when you leave home the next day the battery is at 100 percent, but there is a lot of behind-the-scenes computation and communication going on, and it drains the battery,” Naik explained.
“By midday, charge is reduced to 30 percent, and from the user’s perspective, that is a big pain,” he said. “Due to excess energy consumption, the phone becomes warmer and warmer while the frequent charging reduces the life of the battery. So, batteries that are meant to last for three years may have to be replaced in two years.”
Hey, we’ve all been there. Here’s to hoping this app hits digital stores soon.
Improvements are being made with cell batteries every day. The Samsung Galaxy 9 is apart of that. Read our full hands-on review of the new phone here
Source:geek.com