Being Dumb With My Smartphone

Let's be real. If you're a college student, you phone is essential to everyday functioning. Even if you wanted to completely tune out of the social aspects of cell phone use, ignoring contact from group projects, school email updates, and club meetings would turn to mayhem without this constant connectivity. Since we rely so heavily on this connectivity, a dead phone can mean a full rerouting of the next few hours of your day. I, for one, carry my charger everywhere since I have an oh-so unpopular Android, but I've seen many a library studier pop their head up to search for a friend with an iPhone charger once they realize their phone has died. Once the charger is apprehended, it's plugged in sucks electricity from the grid that comes from a mix of fossil fuel, nuclear, and a small fraction renewable energy. I think it's time we optimize our phone life capabilities to free ourselves from the IV that is our chargers, and save energy at the same time.

What I do

I'm going to be completely honest here, this is a huge weakness of my personal sustainability. I only really use a few energy saving strategies for my phone, but I am committed to implementing more. For this reason, I will include things I already do and things that I commit to doing from now on.

1. NO overnight charging - This is the thing I have done the most to minimize energy consumption with my phone. I use my phone as an alarm, but I make sure it has at least a 40% of charge to stay on throughout the night and wake me up in the morning by plugging it in while I'm brushing my teeth and winding down for the night. I also put my phone on "ultra power-saving mode" while I sleep.

Sidenote - So it turns out this move doesn't actually save all that much energy. The most cited study I could find put the difference in wattage a charger uses when an uncharged phone is plugged in to when a charged phone is plugged in at 1.44 watts. This comes out to around $5.30 extra on a yearly electricity bill if you charge your phone overnight. This is not the first time that I discovered an action I thought was super sustainable ended up just scratching the surface. It's discoveries like these that remind me that sustainability is a practice and isn't always intuitive. This also reminds me that many industries are increasigly making their products more energy efficient, the cell phone industry is no exception.

2. "Ultra Power-Saving Mode" - Android phones have an ultra power-saving mode where the screen menu is limited to texting, calling, and alarms and everything goes to grayscale. This mode is incredibly helpful when I'm sleeping, but also when I'm out doing something and know I won't need any phone functions besides calling and texting. This really extends my battery life thus reducing the necessity to charge. According to International Business Times, the iPhone does not have an ultra power-saving mode, but iPhone users can still put their phone on greyscale in the settings. Airplane mode is also a good power-saving option, though it restricts phone and texting usage.

3. Close out apps, turn down brightness, turn off vibrate - These are pretty standard tactics any smartphone user can implement to decreasing battery drainage. I almost always close out my apps and adjust my phone brightness after I do anything on it since it's an easy habit to form.

What I'm going to start doing

1) Using power saving apps - A lot of what drains smartphone batteries are apps running in the background. There are a ton of apps out there that will quit those apps or put them in hibernation mode, thus making your battery last longer. The one with the best reviews I found for android is Greenify. I just installed it today, so we'll see how that works for me!

2) Sporatic charging - I know this sounds weird, but according to Digital Trends, the optimal way to charge smartphones is in spurts throughout the day aiming to keep the charge between 50% and 80%. The article embedded above explains more about why that works which I found incredibly interesting since this method seems totally counterintuitive to me. My only concern here is that if I don't pay attention to how long I charge each time, my phone may end up using more energy than it had before. To avoid this outcome, I'm going to keep a record of how long I charge my phone total per 24 hours and try to keep it below my average 2 hour/day charging habit. It's looking like there may be a follow-up post on this topic...

Environmental Win

Interestingly enough, I can't find many statistics about phone charging and energy consumption besides the aforementioned difference in wattage when a phone is plugged in and fully charged versus when it is still charging. However, I discovered something much more interesting. There are reports that point to data, wireless, and cloud based energy consumption as one of the fastest growing sources of electricity usage. According to a study analyzed by The Breakthrough, the Information-Communications-Technology (ICT) world will soon, if not already, account for 10% of the world's electricity generation. That's a huge amount of electricity! The above actions that I pledge to take won't directly effect this 10% since they mostly target getting my phone off of it's charger. However, keeping my phone off and in airplane mode as much as possible reduces my contribution to ICT consumption. Well this is a plot twist. There will definitely be a followup post on this one.

In short, reducing energy consumption anywhere, no matter how small of a reduction, is a win. Luckily, there is a wealth of information all over the internet on how to do so for all kinds of phones and electronics. Below are some of the links I found helpful:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/expert-advice-on-how-to-avoid-destroying-your-phones-battery/

https://www.androidpit.com/how-to-save-battery-life

http://www.imobie.com/support/iphone-battery-life-saving-tips.htm

http://www.ibtimes.com/little-known-tip-can-save-your-dying-iphone-6-battery-1704158

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Keeping-your-smartphone-charger-plugged-in-all-night-will-not-send-you-to-the-poor-house_id64942

http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/economic-growth/bracing-for-the-cloud/