Don't buy an iPhone

[Xringer]

Your iPhone uses more energy than a refrigerator - The Week

How much energy does it take to power your smartphone addiction?

The average iPhone uses more energy than a midsize refrigerator, says a new paper by Mark Mills, CEO of Digital Power Group, a tech investment advisory. A midsize refrigerator that qualifies for the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star rating uses about 322 kW-h a year, while your iPhone uses about 361 kW-h if you stack up wireless connections, data usage, and battery charging.


This seems a little weird. I wonder if this is true..?.

I use an old iPhone 4 on wifi only for checking email etc when my desk top PC is off.
It takes so long to boot up, I leave it on and charge it once a week.
Maybe I should leave it off and just reboot when I need it..

For Cells, my wife and I use cheap TracFones, which we leave off,
(full power-down) about 80% of the time.
I charge mine once a week, if needed.

[Daox]

Pretty ridiculous title thats only meant to be eye catching. Server farms have been growing for ages as our techyness demands more and more. Its not like throwing away your iphone is going to save the world 361 kWh a year.

For kicks I ran the numbers on charging. My smart phone has a 1650 mAh battery at 3.8V. That means it holds 6.27 Wh of power. That is 0.00627 kilowatt hours. Say I have to recharge the whole thing every day (its less than that) and it comes to 2.29 kWh a year. More than I would have thought, but really thats nothing.

[MN Renovator]

Even running my Netbook at 25 watts 24/7 is .6kwh a day is 219kwh per year.
My laptop is 40 watts or 360kwh/year. Which actually is about the same as my non-energy star refrigerator after I modded it for additional efficiency.

[Scifficus]

Bull****.

Corporate propaganda. How about a S3 or 4?

Fact, ipad 3, charger rated at 15W, charging from 5-8 % to 100% up to 6 hours. A very brief math, if charged daily, 6x15=90W, 90x365=32.850W per year meaning a wooping 32,85KWh.

An iphone charger is rated at 5W. Any questions?

Later Edit. ... and charging time arownd 3 hours.

[where2]

I cannot recreate the math used to come to the original author's conclusion:

Kill-A-Watt + iPhone charger =0W standby
Kill-A-Watt + iPhone charger + iPhone 4S = 6W

Assuming you charged your iPhone every night for 8 hours, you would consume 17.52kWh for the year. (6W*8h*365)/1000=17.52kWh

[Xringer]

Whenever my wife charges up her iPad mini or when I charge up the iPhone4,
I'm always amazed at how fast these things charge up. Seems like they get most
of their re-charge during the first hour.

I hope these batteries don't wear out too fast, being re-charged so often.

[elhigh]

Originally Posted by Xringer

Whenever my wife charges up her iPad mini or when I charge up the iPhone4,
I'm always amazed at how fast these things charge up. Seems like they get most
of their re-charge during the first hour.

I hope these batteries don't wear out too fast, being re-charged so often.

The shallower the discharge, the better the batteries will fare. I had two sets of NiMH AA batteries that I would switch into my Walkman (remember those?) at lunchtime to keep the discharge cycles reasonable. Those two pair of batteries went two whole years, 500 charge/discharge cycles. Then my job changed and I got a Sansa Fuze.

[Xringer]

Originally Posted by elhigh

The shallower the discharge, the better the batteries will fare. I had two sets of NiMH AA batteries that I would switch into my Walkman (remember those?) at lunchtime to keep the discharge cycles reasonable. Those two pair of batteries went two whole years, 500 charge/discharge cycles. Then my job changed and I got a Sansa Fuze.

I'm using some solder-tab NiMH AA cells (2,000 mAh?) in my Norelco razor.
It's very old and the ni-cads died a couple years ago.
So, I'm trying the shallow discharge thing with these. So far, so good.

The Prius C uses NiMH, and I wish my wife could do a little shallow discharge too.
The other week, she forgot to turn it off (in park) overnight.
I don't think it ran the IC engine (no smell in the garage),
but the pack indicator was at one bar when I wanted to go to the movies.

You know, that's one more good reason for having a detached garage.


I'm now charging everything up every 2 weeks now. (PC reminder app).

My LG 840G (Tracfone) is only turned on when I'm out somewhere,
so every 14 days should work for it. My Kindle Fire is only on when
I'm reading an eBook, which is really low usage..
The story I'm reading now is boring, thus easy on the battery..

I've been thinking of getting one of those Moultrie M-880 8MP Game Cameras.
Want to get some wildlife pics and maybe use for security cam too.

But, it uses eight AA cells! However, it does have a 12V aux input!
So, I could run it off the solar reading lamp rig. (big car battery)..
Maybe even get it to run an Eye-Fi SD card too..

[Scifficus]

@where2 If you leave your phone conected 8 hours to charging it won't take 6 W all the time, only first 2 hours and the rest of the time the amount of power is only for sustained charging, about 1 W to 2-3 hours.

[jeff5may]

Just goes to show how efficient modern refrigerators really are.