Tips for Extending Smartphone Battery Life
By: Kara Tsuboi, CNET.com for CBS News
Updated: April 9, 2012
One of the biggest complaints about smartphones is how quickly the battery drains.
To conserve energy, you can try turning down the screen brightness or connecting over wireless internet instead of the network. But there is another solution to this common problem.
I know how much you love playing your Angry Birds...for hours on end. And while I'm not suggesting you stop playing the addictive game, if you're interesting in conserving battery life, I suggest you download the PAID version instead of the FREE one.
Here's the situation: Computer scientists at Purdue University conducted tests to analyze apps' usage on Android phones. What they found is somewhat surprising: only ten to thirty percent of the energy used is spent to power the actual functionality of the app. What that means is the other seventy to ninety percent of the battery juice is used essentially for advertisements.
When you open an app, especially a free one, your phone needs to connect to a network, draining the battery, turn on the GPS to find your location, draining the battery, and then downloads ads specific to your location, again, draining the battery.
So a simple solution -- or tradeoff -- would be to pay for the advertisement-free apps. Hey, $2.99 for that many hours of Angry Birds entertainment seems like a deal to me
(Kara Tsuboi for CNN's Tech Minute)
To conserve energy, you can try turning down the screen brightness or connecting over wireless internet instead of the network. But there is another solution to this common problem.
I know how much you love playing your Angry Birds...for hours on end. And while I'm not suggesting you stop playing the addictive game, if you're interesting in conserving battery life, I suggest you download the PAID version instead of the FREE one.
Here's the situation: Computer scientists at Purdue University conducted tests to analyze apps' usage on Android phones. What they found is somewhat surprising: only ten to thirty percent of the energy used is spent to power the actual functionality of the app. What that means is the other seventy to ninety percent of the battery juice is used essentially for advertisements.
When you open an app, especially a free one, your phone needs to connect to a network, draining the battery, turn on the GPS to find your location, draining the battery, and then downloads ads specific to your location, again, draining the battery.
So a simple solution -- or tradeoff -- would be to pay for the advertisement-free apps. Hey, $2.99 for that many hours of Angry Birds entertainment seems like a deal to me
(Kara Tsuboi for CNN's Tech Minute)
