Observers have long suspected that youngster’s smartphones might be rotting their brains, but a new survey points to a more sinister evil: mobile applications may be contributing to global warming far more than previously understood.
A study by Greenspector – a French startup specialising in measuring energy efficiency in IoT applications – has found that mobile applications on the Google Play app store contribute to at least 6% of ‘digital’ carbon dioxide emissions.
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The study’s findings were recently unveiled at the MobileOne conference held in Paris in November where delegates were told the survey had sampled over 1,000 Android applications using a number of measurement tools designed to track various ‘green’ attributes.
Key findings
- Mobile applications, on average, account for 0.75 grams of ‘CO2 equivalent.’ Projecting that across a potential base of 5 billion mobile users at three hours of usage per day drives 6% of digital CO2 emissions.
- Trackers, analytics and other permissions – those things you agree to let your application have access to on your smartphone when you download an app – are not only annoying but also energy-hungry.
Greenspector estimated that on average that 44% of apps downloaded have more than five trackers, while nearly three-quarters require more than 10 permissions. These drive additional energy consumption and add to smartphones’ collective environmental footprint.
- Fifty per cent of applications continue to process or send data after an application closes: for example, by backing up data on external servers way too often. Greenspector estimates that the most offending applications can reduce total battery time by three hours – with users often likely to blame the smartphone manufacturer and not the app developer.
The Greenspector study should serve as a reminder for smartphone users who are all too happy to download applications from the Google Play store. For starters, it is a good idea to consider whether the application to be downloaded needs access to all of the functions to which it is seeking access – not only for privacy and security reasons but also for smartphone performance reasons as well as for environmental and global sustainability concerns.
The study’s findings should serve as a reminder that, while our phones provide untold levels of convenience and connectivity on an individual basis, collectively they have considerable effects on our environment and in generating greenhouse gas emissions.
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By GlobalDataThe way forward
Google, along with Android smartphone manufacturers like Samsung and LG, could lead the way by playing a much stronger role in identifying the worst-offending applications – and insisting on a new suite of ‘best practices’ that could both improve smartphone performance and reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the process.
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