3 ms·

My cellphone (pocket computer) needs 10 Wh to run all day. For the same amount of energy, the lights in my office will run for 6 minutes. I'm not buying this "m

My cellphone (pocket computer) needs 10 Wh to run all day. For the same amount of energy, the lights in my office will run for 6 minutes. I'm not buying this "must decomputerize" pitch.

KaiserPro 7y ago
yes, but the masts, wifi, network and servers to support that consume a lot more than 10Wh
- quaquaqua1 7y ago
  How much do they use compared to 24 hours of constant, valueless office lighting?
  - kryogen1c 7y ago
    Total, all-in energy costs is actually a pretty interesting question and intellectual exercise. Paint is actually super high on the list
  - KaiserPro 7y ago
    [.......] ^ this much, (not to scale.)
- maliker 7y ago
  I'd guess the energy costs would be similar since it's roughly the same hardware (CPUs, memory, radio transmitters) but minus the display.
  - fock 7y ago
    just having a lot higher transmission power and a lot of supporting hardware to keep things running for seasons (have you ever used your mobile phone in -10°C for an extended time - could you?) and years. I just did a little googling and found something like "total power consumption of all mobile phones in India"x15 (can't get the link, because of, well there's another comment for that...)
- cellularmitosis 7y ago
  And when you divide that by millions of users, how many watt hours is it?
  - KaiserPro 7y ago
    The only service that I know of that has millions of users on one instance is whatsapp. Everything else you're looking at 1% of a cpu, so 1% of ~40-80watts per connection. More if its active.
fock 7y ago
unfortunately for most people (including myself) the cellphone is nothing more than a fashionable toy which needs permanent connectivity and data-influx to be relevant as well as regular replacement (because fashion). And this is consuming a lot more than 10Wh a day. Technically I could (and probably would) still use my old Galaxy Nexus if I had a secure browser/mediaplayer and would only browse sites at the "complexity" of HN, had a chat app which wouldn't randomly hang the UI for seconds when task-switching (probably it would help having no emote-packs, videos-disguised-as-gifs and perfectly viable 720p-pictures as the inline-default) and the 3G network around was a little bit better... And yeah I (and a lot of other people) wouldn't miss a thing, GOOG and co. might have a little less cash in store and the craft of UX-designer might pay a little worse (BUT: all of this would have catastrophic consequences on the service oriented growth economy of the US which might not even hit Joe Doe very much if properly managed but would remove a little power of all the epsteins of this world, which of course can't happen...)

My cellphone (pocket computer) needs 10 Wh to run all day. For the same amount of energy, the lights in my office will run for 6 minutes. I'm not buying this "must decomputerize" pitch.

KaiserPro 7y ago

yes, but the masts, wifi, network and servers to support that consume a lot more than 10Wh

quaquaqua1 7y ago
How much do they use compared to 24 hours of constant, valueless office lighting?
- kryogen1c 7y ago
  Total, all-in energy costs is actually a pretty interesting question and intellectual exercise. Paint is actually super high on the list
- KaiserPro 7y ago
  [.......] ^ this much, (not to scale.)
maliker 7y ago
I'd guess the energy costs would be similar since it's roughly the same hardware (CPUs, memory, radio transmitters) but minus the display.
- fock 7y ago
  just having a lot higher transmission power and a lot of supporting hardware to keep things running for seasons (have you ever used your mobile phone in -10°C for an extended time - could you?) and years. I just did a little googling and found something like "total power consumption of all mobile phones in India"x15 (can't get the link, because of, well there's another comment for that...)
cellularmitosis 7y ago
And when you divide that by millions of users, how many watt hours is it?
- KaiserPro 7y ago
  The only service that I know of that has millions of users on one instance is whatsapp. Everything else you're looking at 1% of a cpu, so 1% of ~40-80watts per connection. More if its active.

fock 7y ago

unfortunately for most people (including myself) the cellphone is nothing more than a fashionable toy which needs permanent connectivity and data-influx to be relevant as well as regular replacement (because fashion). And this is consuming a lot more than 10Wh a day. Technically I could (and probably would) still use my old Galaxy Nexus if I had a secure browser/mediaplayer and would only browse sites at the "complexity" of HN, had a chat app which wouldn't randomly hang the UI for seconds when task-switching (probably it would help having no emote-packs, videos-disguised-as-gifs and perfectly viable 720p-pictures as the inline-default) and the 3G network around was a little bit better... And yeah I (and a lot of other people) wouldn't miss a thing, GOOG and co. might have a little less cash in store and the craft of UX-designer might pay a little worse (BUT: all of this would have catastrophic consequences on the service oriented growth economy of the US which might not even hit Joe Doe very much if properly managed but would remove a little power of all the epsteins of this world, which of course can't happen...)