TSNT: Is your Smartphone an Energy Eater?

Try Something New Tuesday! 

Is your Smartphone an Energy Eater?

We hear people talk about saving energy all day long. Turn off the lights. Walk to the store. Only use the dishwasher for full loads. Shut the front door. Close the refrigerator! Keep the thermostat to 68 degrees year round (my husband's favorite). But did you know your Smartphone is wasting energy?

What? How can this be? It's so small?

Take a look:

Feel a little better? As you can see Smartphones actually use less energy than their bigger competitors. Recent research shows that the average person spends at least 2 hours a day on their Smartphone. People are completing more tasks such as: checking Facebook, responding to email, checking the news, playing games, etc than on their PC.

Still...your Smartphone is using extra energy that is really doesn't need to.

Here are five quick tips to save power and energy:


1. At night, when it is charged. Turn.it.off. Yes, unplug and go to bed, I promise it will be waiting for you in the morning.

2. Close out your apps on your phone. It's the same problem as having several programs and internet tabs open on your PC. Don't know how, here you go:

Double click your 'Home" button on your iPhone, you'll see the apps which are open, jiggling at the bottom.

hold down one and you will see a red circle with a white line which means to close them out. It will not delete them.

3. Check which apps are taking up space on your phone.

Go to settings, click general, then usage. You can clearly see which apps are taking up the most space, etc. Obviously I'm behind on uploading/backing up my pictures.

4. Lock your phone (or put it on a short auto-lock). If your phone isn't set to a quick auto-lock time already, be sure to correct it. There's a good chance that your phone could waste battery power when you aren't using it if it isn't locked.

5. When you can, lower the brightness. It will be somewhat more difficult to use apps or read something on low brightness, but it will save you lots of battery power.

Moral of the story: if you have not already, please be mindful for being responsible for your Smartphone in saving energy. Your Smartphone is not human ...yet.



Note:  Some of these tips are more specific to iPhone (my apologizes, that's the device I utilize).
http://www.epri.com/Pages/Default.aspx
For more info, read this blog: http://lifehacker.com/5948075/how-much-energy-a-smartphone-uses-in-a-year-and-what-it-means-for-your-budget