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>By one estimate, a data-hungry user’s smartphone can consume as much electricity in a year as her fridge does. Bull-fucking-shit. At minimum a refrigerator us

>By one estimate, a data-hungry user’s smartphone can consume as much electricity in a year as her fridge does. Bull-fucking-shit. At minimum a refrigerator uses 150 watts and averages over 200. In comparison, a flagship gaming smartphone with an overclocked SoC like the Asus ROG phone uses 3.8 watts while benchmarking. Nobody with two brain cells to rub together could be stupid enough to think a phone uses more power than a goddamn refrigerator. The fact the author treats that as a serious possibility should make you question the credibility of every single thing they've ever written.

Waterluvian 7y ago
It reminds me about reading articles about a topic of which I'm an expert. First I notice all the errors and then I realize that every article must be like this to their domain experts.
- simonh 7y ago
  Even that can be misleading though. OP missed the fact the energy usage estimate included energy used to provide services to the phone as well. It’s a big problem with evaluating news articles. They’re not journals and you can’t be sure what they are knowingly summarising and what they are over simplifying or obscuring and why. Definitely worth keeping a critical stance though.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    >OP missed the fact the energy usage estimate included energy used to provide services to the phone as well. Except those services don't exist in a vacuum. Presenting that power usage as if it is just stacked on top of the usage of a person without a phone is gross misrepresentation. Time spent on a phone is time not spent on a television, on a desktop pc, on a games console, driving a vehicle to some other distraction like a movie theater or amusement park. Except for the printed word a smartphone is among the least energy intensive ways to entertain a human being and I put forth that using one results in a reduction, not an increase, in overall energy use and carbon footprint compared to a person without one.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- natrik 7y ago
  Term for this is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
ehead 7y ago
Perhaps the author was quoting a statistic that includes electricity requirements of the datacenters and infrastructure to power the phone. Perhaps not, but that would be an interesting statistic.
- martinpw 7y ago
  Yes that must be what the statistic represents since it emphasises data heavy users. It would be interesting to do some back if the envelope calculations based on energy usage of Google and Facebook datacenters, percentage of content consumed on phones and data consumed by average vs heavy users.
dredmorbius 7y ago
The average iPhone, according to Mills’ calculations, uses about 361 kW-h a year once the wireless connections, data usage and battery charging are tallied up. http://science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-cloud-is-using-more-energy-than-you-think/ http://science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-c...
- buchanan 7y ago
  Going from that link to the atkearney report, I tend to interpret that the 19.1 kW/h per GB of data as data centre cost. If that’s the case, it would not be correct to use it to calculate per phone consumption. The 1GB of data cost is sunk cost, whether it’s accessed by one or a million. On the other hand, if we only had one smartphone in this world, we wouldn’t be storing zettabytes for it to access :) More suitable numbers were 3.5 kW/h for the phone, and 23.4 kW/h for each connection. So, phone consumption should more accurately be 23.4 + 3.5 + (19.1 * total world storage / total world smartphone) !
  - majewsky 7y ago
    You mean kWh, not kW/h. Watt per hour would measure a change in power consumption over time.
    - mxfh 7y ago
      Still an absurdly high number. fixed line internet has 0.06 kWh/GB according to this 2018 study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630 The majority of data heavy stuff also tends to happen in WiFi environments. So I dont know where this 300x overhead increase is supposed to come from. A typical 3G base station is burning 500W/h no matter what data usage is. So unless you share you wireless cell with less than 5 people this should be magnitudes below a fridge. The wired part of the infrastructure is much more efficient and aggregated in general. I suppose the biggest culprut are not even the smarthones, but their cloud storage services, which are completely optional and not used to a large extent by the majority of smartphone users. Most of all ISP profits and subscription costs would also be decisively lower/higher if energy use and therefore cost was supposedly that significant.
wmeddie 7y ago
I also agree that this estimate is way off, but I think the idea is to think of the total energy use of the phone when you include the energy used by the servers that provide the services you use in apps. That is much harder to measure. Luckily Google, Facebook and Twitter invest a lot in energy saving at their data centers so it's one of the leanest ways of using compute power. I think that even when you put that energy into the equation, it's still nowhere near a refrigerator.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  > when you include the energy used by the servers that provide the services you use in apps. So do you include the energy used by the grid and its maintenance to provide power to your individual fridge? I guess not.
- Causality1 7y ago
  If you do that you have to include the energy savings from the phone use as well. The television that isn't turned on, the desktop computer that isn't running, the drive to the movie theater that didn't happen. I'd bet dollars to donuts that smartphone use reduces an individual's overall energy consumption.
brokenmachine 7y ago
"By one (completely delusional) estimate". Reminds me of how every year when a new and incrementally improved phone is released, the phone company shills and morons claim that the camera is so revolutionary, it's almost as good as an SLR. Yeah, pros and enthusiasts are so ill-informed that they continue to lug around their bulky 5kgs and $5k worth of camera/lens, when it could all be replaced by the latest plastic iCrap and its revolutionary 5mm lens. Critical thinking seems to be in short supply.
zrm 7y ago
> At minimum a refrigerator uses 150 watts and averages over 200. That's only when the compressor is running though, which it only does when the temperature is above the setting. For a well-insulated modern refrigerator, that is far from continuously. In an unheated space in a cold climate it would be rare. In a heated space the net effect of installing the refrigerator may be to slightly reduce energy consumption because you end up partially heating the space with a high efficiency heat pump rather than a less efficient resistive or oil/gas based heating system. Obviously it isn't the typical case, but a refrigerator consuming less net power than a phone is a thing that can happen under some circumstances that actually occur in real life.
- brokenmachine 7y ago
  From the first google result I came across, "A typical fridge of about 400-500 litres can use around 495kWh of electricity each year". So what you are talking about is very atypical result. My phone has a 4Ah battery, which typically would last me two days. Since it runs at 5V, that's 0.02*182 = 3.65kWh per year. So it's 136 times less than the typical fridge. My phone would also be heating the house with it's inefficiency.
  - zrm 7y ago
    > From the first google result I came across, "A typical fridge of about 400-500 litres can use around 495kWh of electricity each year". The problem with "typical" is that the variance is high. It's even worse than that in hot climates with air conditioning because not only does the refrigerator compressor have to run more, it's pumping heat into a space that then causes the air conditioner to run more. So the average isn't very informative without knowing where you are in relation to it. The difference in the numbers between Colorado and Florida is dramatic. > My phone would also be heating the house with it's inefficiency. Only if you leave it at home instead of taking it with you when you go outside.
    - brokenmachine 7y ago
      >the variance is high More than two orders of magnitude? >Only if you leave it at home instead of taking it with you when you go outside. Well it's charging overnight. My phone is inside the house probably half the time. Honestly this is a really silly argument. If we cared about the extra heating from fridges then we would put them outside in hot climates. If we're talking about a hundred phones versus a fridge, it might be comparable. I take your point about hot climates but I still think any comparison about power usage between a phone and a fridge is ridiculous and draws into question the credibility of the writer.

Waterluvian 7y ago

It reminds me about reading articles about a topic of which I'm an expert. First I notice all the errors and then I realize that every article must be like this to their domain experts.

simonh 7y ago
Even that can be misleading though. OP missed the fact the energy usage estimate included energy used to provide services to the phone as well. It’s a big problem with evaluating news articles. They’re not journals and you can’t be sure what they are knowingly summarising and what they are over simplifying or obscuring and why. Definitely worth keeping a critical stance though.
- Causality1 7y ago
  >OP missed the fact the energy usage estimate included energy used to provide services to the phone as well. Except those services don't exist in a vacuum. Presenting that power usage as if it is just stacked on top of the usage of a person without a phone is gross misrepresentation. Time spent on a phone is time not spent on a television, on a desktop pc, on a games console, driving a vehicle to some other distraction like a movie theater or amusement park. Except for the printed word a smartphone is among the least energy intensive ways to entertain a human being and I put forth that using one results in a reduction, not an increase, in overall energy use and carbon footprint compared to a person without one.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
natrik 7y ago
Term for this is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

ehead 7y ago

Perhaps the author was quoting a statistic that includes electricity requirements of the datacenters and infrastructure to power the phone. Perhaps not, but that would be an interesting statistic.

martinpw 7y ago
Yes that must be what the statistic represents since it emphasises data heavy users. It would be interesting to do some back if the envelope calculations based on energy usage of Google and Facebook datacenters, percentage of content consumed on phones and data consumed by average vs heavy users.

dredmorbius 7y ago

The average iPhone, according to Mills’ calculations, uses about 361 kW-h a year once the wireless connections, data usage and battery charging are tallied up. http://science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-cloud-is-using-more-energy-than-you-think/ http://science.time.com/2013/08/14/power-drain-the-digital-c...

buchanan 7y ago
Going from that link to the atkearney report, I tend to interpret that the 19.1 kW/h per GB of data as data centre cost. If that’s the case, it would not be correct to use it to calculate per phone consumption. The 1GB of data cost is sunk cost, whether it’s accessed by one or a million. On the other hand, if we only had one smartphone in this world, we wouldn’t be storing zettabytes for it to access :) More suitable numbers were 3.5 kW/h for the phone, and 23.4 kW/h for each connection. So, phone consumption should more accurately be 23.4 + 3.5 + (19.1 * total world storage / total world smartphone) !
- majewsky 7y ago
  You mean kWh, not kW/h. Watt per hour would measure a change in power consumption over time.
  - mxfh 7y ago
    Still an absurdly high number. fixed line internet has 0.06 kWh/GB according to this 2018 study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/jiec.12630 The majority of data heavy stuff also tends to happen in WiFi environments. So I dont know where this 300x overhead increase is supposed to come from. A typical 3G base station is burning 500W/h no matter what data usage is. So unless you share you wireless cell with less than 5 people this should be magnitudes below a fridge. The wired part of the infrastructure is much more efficient and aggregated in general. I suppose the biggest culprut are not even the smarthones, but their cloud storage services, which are completely optional and not used to a large extent by the majority of smartphone users. Most of all ISP profits and subscription costs would also be decisively lower/higher if energy use and therefore cost was supposedly that significant.

wmeddie 7y ago

I also agree that this estimate is way off, but I think the idea is to think of the total energy use of the phone when you include the energy used by the servers that provide the services you use in apps. That is much harder to measure. Luckily Google, Facebook and Twitter invest a lot in energy saving at their data centers so it's one of the leanest ways of using compute power. I think that even when you put that energy into the equation, it's still nowhere near a refrigerator.

ekianjo 7y ago
> when you include the energy used by the servers that provide the services you use in apps. So do you include the energy used by the grid and its maintenance to provide power to your individual fridge? I guess not.
Causality1 7y ago
If you do that you have to include the energy savings from the phone use as well. The television that isn't turned on, the desktop computer that isn't running, the drive to the movie theater that didn't happen. I'd bet dollars to donuts that smartphone use reduces an individual's overall energy consumption.

brokenmachine 7y ago

"By one (completely delusional) estimate". Reminds me of how every year when a new and incrementally improved phone is released, the phone company shills and morons claim that the camera is so revolutionary, it's almost as good as an SLR. Yeah, pros and enthusiasts are so ill-informed that they continue to lug around their bulky 5kgs and $5k worth of camera/lens, when it could all be replaced by the latest plastic iCrap and its revolutionary 5mm lens. Critical thinking seems to be in short supply.

zrm 7y ago

> At minimum a refrigerator uses 150 watts and averages over 200. That's only when the compressor is running though, which it only does when the temperature is above the setting. For a well-insulated modern refrigerator, that is far from continuously. In an unheated space in a cold climate it would be rare. In a heated space the net effect of installing the refrigerator may be to slightly reduce energy consumption because you end up partially heating the space with a high efficiency heat pump rather than a less efficient resistive or oil/gas based heating system. Obviously it isn't the typical case, but a refrigerator consuming less net power than a phone is a thing that can happen under some circumstances that actually occur in real life.

brokenmachine 7y ago
From the first google result I came across, "A typical fridge of about 400-500 litres can use around 495kWh of electricity each year". So what you are talking about is very atypical result. My phone has a 4Ah battery, which typically would last me two days. Since it runs at 5V, that's 0.02*182 = 3.65kWh per year. So it's 136 times less than the typical fridge. My phone would also be heating the house with it's inefficiency.
- zrm 7y ago
  > From the first google result I came across, "A typical fridge of about 400-500 litres can use around 495kWh of electricity each year". The problem with "typical" is that the variance is high. It's even worse than that in hot climates with air conditioning because not only does the refrigerator compressor have to run more, it's pumping heat into a space that then causes the air conditioner to run more. So the average isn't very informative without knowing where you are in relation to it. The difference in the numbers between Colorado and Florida is dramatic. > My phone would also be heating the house with it's inefficiency. Only if you leave it at home instead of taking it with you when you go outside.
  - brokenmachine 7y ago
    >the variance is high More than two orders of magnitude? >Only if you leave it at home instead of taking it with you when you go outside. Well it's charging overnight. My phone is inside the house probably half the time. Honestly this is a really silly argument. If we cared about the extra heating from fridges then we would put them outside in hot climates. If we're talking about a hundred phones versus a fridge, it might be comparable. I take your point about hot climates but I still think any comparison about power usage between a phone and a fridge is ridiculous and draws into question the credibility of the writer.