In the “old days”, you could get away for the weekend
without the need to take your cell phone charger, much less have to recharge
your battery. But with the growing
technology being built into smartphones and tablets today, powering these
devices is draining batteries quickly.
Thereby, requiring you to be tethered to your charger and re-charging
your battery during the day.
Most smartphones today use Lithium ion batteries. These batteries are approaching their power
capacities, especially when you take into consideration that power requirements
for all mobile devices are increasing at a rapid rate. Smartphones and tablets crave battery power
and battery technology is not keeping up the pace.
One problem with battery capacity involves the chemical
nature of the battery itself. Lithium
ion battery technology hasn’t changed much in the last 15 years. However, smartphone and tablet technology is
changing very quickly. These devices get faster processors, higher-resolution
displays, and powerful new software updates every few months. It’s been said that these handheld computers
are more powerful than the hardware NASA used to send a man to the moon. And with the varying high
demands people are placing on their smartphones and tablets today, the battery
is definitely the bottleneck.
Not only is the chemical and physical limits of batteries a
problem, apps are also battery killers. Free
apps are among the worst offenders of inefficient power consumption. Many of these apps use GPS technology to
record your geographical location, download ads that are displayed within the apps,
use the smartphone camera and compass tools, and even send information about
you to advertisers over the Internet.
Apple takes steps to examine an app’s power usage when
deciding to approve it for sale in the App Store and will reject an app if they
think it may intentionally ruin battery life.
Most seasoned app developers try not to use more battery life than they
need to run their app. Perhaps because users
may delete their app or give it a low rating if they notice the drain on their
battery.
Research has shown that advertising-related tasks typically take
up 65% to 75% of the energy used to run a free app. As with the popular game Angry Birds, only
25% of the energy used is actually used for playing the game – the advertising
function uses 75%. Games are not the
only power hogs – applications can also utilize these methods of draining
battery capacity.
Many free apps today use embedded advertising software to
send information to the Internet - such as updating user information, downloading
ads, and for tracking users. This
software fails to close its connection to the Internet once these tasks take
place therefore forcing another program to do the clean up and thereby wasting
energy in the process. Typically, this
connection to the Internet should be complete within a fraction of a
second. However, research has found that
seven seconds per interaction can be
wasted this way. The thought is that
software developers should modify apps to circumvent this problem.
So, are free apps really “free”? Not when you consider the costs of reduced
battery life. Batteries in mobile
devices are very efficient compared to batteries used a decade ago – but they
are reaching their capacity. The use of
smartphones and the app market will no doubt continue to increase in popularity. But it is also likely that battery life and
power consumption will remain a big factor in their usefulness. Until battery technology picks up the pace
with improvements in efficiency and software developers design apps for more
efficient use of battery power, expect your smartphone or tablet battery to use
more energy than really necessary.
What can you do? To further help you with your
smartphone and tablet concerns, can give Kardon Tech a call.
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