How much power does my phone consume?
Posted by BA on Jul 19, 2010 in Green Computing, Mobile, Smartphones, Technology, Telecommunication | 17 comments
Did you ever think how much power does your cell phone consume? Yes, we know it will be negligible but once the number of consumers has grown to a very high number all around the world, the power being consumed as a whole may be significant?
Let’s do some simple maths and we are not getting into any fancy tools here. It’s simple arithmetic. You will need to find three numbers about your phone before you start this calculation. The numbers are:
- The battery capacity in mAh (milli-Ampere-hour)
- The voltage output of the battery ( volts )
- Total Talk time
- Total Standby Time (optional)
Mobile Phones are better than Computers – Green Computing
Posted by BA on Jul 16, 2010 in Green Computing, Handsets, Internet, Mobile Apps, Nokia, Nokia OVI apps | 0 comments
Mobile Phones consume very low power
What do you use your computer for? Surfing Internet, chat, gaming, social networking, downloading, desktop computing including documents, spreadsheets or presentation making or just watching your photos and videos? Today’s mobile phones are capable of doing it all, rather sometimes more than the traditional phones. They have faster processors, more ram, faster wireless Internet connectivity and larger memories.
Today I will start another series of posts that will tell you how to use your phones to do things that you usually do with your computers including desktops, laptops and netbooks. This series of posts will include tips, tricks and software that you can use to avoid the use of computers and just use your phone 
Why are mobile phones better?
If you have not done so, you can read my earlier articles that prove that laptops are better than desktops, because they take around 60 watts of power as compared to a few hundred watts. Then we also discussed that netbooks are even better than laptops taking half the power as compared to a full sized notebook. Today we will move one step ahead.
To prove my point I used this app called Nokia Energy Profiler. The app is a free download available on Nokia OVI store for almost all Nokia devices. The application gives you exact numbers in terms of power consumption, network bandwidth utilization and a few more important things that you never come to know when using a mobile phone. Just like any other computing device, Nokia phones consume low power when idle and take more power when performing more computation.
Here are a few screen-shots. As you can see, when the phone is idle, it takes 0.18 watts on average. When navigating the menu and viewing simple content like photos on the phone screen, its consuming 0.23 watts on average. In the third screenshot, the phone is being used for a voice+video call over a wifi network and the battery usage is at it’s top, that is around 2 watts.
Idle State
Phone Menu Use
Skype Video Call - High Power Consumption
Sudden Spike when receiving call
In the last screen shot you can see the sudden rise in battery consumption when there’s an incoming call ringing and picked up.
In any case, this particular cellphone is using less than 2 watts of power which is way less than the other computing devices we listed above.
Conclusion
Use mobile phones for your computing needs whenever and wherever possible. You’ll save power and will contribute your efforts in keeping this planet green. Happy Green Computing!
Read MoreNetbooks are better than Notebooks – Green Computing
Posted by BA on May 22, 2010 in Green Computing | 9 comments
We have been discussing the green-computing advantage of Laptops over the Desktop computers when it comes to power consumption. Today we’ll take the discussion one step further in our green-computing section.
All of us have heard about net-books, the miniature versions of the laptops/notebook PCs. Capabilities of the Netbooks are good enough for normal use, desktop computing and web-surfing etc. The advantage they give you is the size, handling and power consumption.
We discussed the power consumption advantage of Laptops over Desktops in a previous post. We discussed that Laptops typically take around 60 to 65 watts of power during normal operation. An average Netbook running on Intel Atom processor consumes around 30 to 35 watts of power during normal use. This is actually around half of the power consumption of Notebooks and Laptops.
So if you are not a power user and desktop processing, chatting, Internet surfing is all what you have to do on your PC, prefer a Netbook instead of a Notebook.
I know a number of Netbook haters out there not because of their capabilities in terms of specifications but due to their small size, very small screen and no optical drive. You can purchase a few components and make a good desktop docking station for your Netbook to overcome these issues. For example, you can buy a larger LCD screen, a USB Keyboard, Mouse and a USB external optical drive. While you are on the go, you live with the small components and when you are back home, you can enjoy a full fledged computing experience right out of your netbook with a lower power consumption.
Green Computing Bottom Line
Don’t use desktop computers at all. Use either laptops, notebooks or netbooks for a green-computing advantage. You should prefer a netbook over the notebooks and laptops as well as they consume the lowest power of them all.
Read MoreHow much power does my computer consume?
Posted by BA on Feb 12, 2010 in Uncategorized | 46 comments
This is a typical question every eco friendly minded person asks himself. I cannot tell you exactly but here are a few general guidelines that will tell you how much power your computer generally consumes.
Keeping it very simple, there are two main components of a computer that take most of the power. A screen and the CPU box (that contains most of the electronics of your computer). So we will have different power consumption ranges for these two components.
Power consumption for Computer Screens
In general, the power consumption is higher for CRT monitors. The older fat monitors and TVs are all CRTs. You can read more about the CRT here. The flatter, thinner and lighter monitors take lesser power and are eventually more green and eco friendly. These could be LCD, TFT, LED or Plasma monitors and have their own different properties, but in general they consume power lesser than a CRT. Following is a very general comparison:
So an obvious option is to ditch your CRT and move on with a lower power variant, most popular are the LCD monitors.
Power Consumption for CPU
If you have a desktop computer, your CPU will comprise of several parts and all these parts will determine how much power your PC will consume. Moreover, what operation you are performing on the computer will also determine the power consumption. As a rule of thumb, a typical desktop computer consumes around 300 Watts. If you want to know about your desktop, try to find the power supply inside your CPU box and the sticker will show the total power of the machine as shown in the image below.
Following is an example of a typical 300 Watts desktop power-supply side sticker:
In case you have a laptop, the power consumption is much lowe. I’ll be posting something about it in my next post.
Read MoreTake a photo and buy the item from Amazon. Just amazing!
Posted by BA on Feb 7, 2010 in Uncategorized | 0 comments
Amazon shopping app fro BlackBerry
Amazon.com has long been optimized for mobile experience but today I came across this interesting app by Amazon.com for BlackBerry devices. You simply go to http://www.amazon.com and it offers you to download the app. The app is simple to install and use. It has normal options of searching products, reading descriptions, viewing reviews and checking out product photos and eventually buying it right there and then fromt he app.
The feature that impressed me a lot is called “Amazon Remembers”. The feature allows you to take a photo of an item that you want to purchase and Amazon suggests a product same or similar to it.
Here’s how it actually detected my BlackBerry charger
The app showed me the number of steps I need to perform to make the feature work. I grabbed my BlackBerry charger and took a photo right away to see how it works.
