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!

Your necklace pendant is your sixth sense!

Posted by BA on Apr 19, 2009 in Uncategorized | 0 comments

The day is not far when we all will have an option of wearing this small gadget that will truly change our lives forever by adding this sixth sense. Sixth Sense is basically a computing system, just like our personal computers but its very different in the way you use it. Its a combination of a camera, mini-projector and a cell-phone in your pocket. The system can observe whatever you come across, processes the information over the Internet and can present you with results, suggesting and helping you in making day to day decisions.

Basic computers take input from input devices like keyboard, process it and give output onto a screen. Sixth sense takes input from a camera hanging to your neck band, that looks at things around you and takes commands from your hand-gestures. This information captured via camera is processed in the cell-phone and can be sent to the internet for further processing/information extraction and the results are eventually projected out using the projector, may be on the nearby wall or on something that you hold.

This is more than a month old video but if you have’nt heard about sixth sense as yet, it is bound to drop your jaw instantly!!