Your iPhone Uses More Energy Than A Refrigerator

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An iPhone uses more energy than a refrigerator? Yeah, but what good is that? You can't play Candy Crush and take duck-face selfies with a fridge. :rolleyes:

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.
Click to expand...
 
Anyone verify these claims with a Kill-a-Watt or similar device?
 
361 kW-h seems like a fuck ton of power though, that's about 10 kWh a day... The average phone battery is only ~1.6kWh, granted there are charger losses etc, but that seems a bit much.
 
100% false. Even if you include losses of leaving those damn chargers plugged in.
 
the fuck? "if you stack up wireless connections, data usage, and battery charging." meaning what, exactly? theyre counting the yearly energy use of every cell tower and every router ive connected to all year? i call FUD all over this article.
 
tazeat said:
361 kW-h seems like a fuck ton of power though, that's about 10 kWh a day... The average phone battery is only ~1.6kWh, granted there are charger losses etc, but that seems a bit much.
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The average phone battery is more like 10 W-h not 1.6 kwh, lol. A prius has less kW-h then that.

An iphone battery is more like 8 W-hr.

361 kW-h/8W-hr = 45,125 recharges.

That's 123 recharges per day. He's probably just looking to pump some stock or something with lies so blatant.
 
By the same token, my fridge can use a lot more power than that if I leave the door open. However, you're not going to keep an iPhone under 100% load 24/7, just like I'm not going to keep my fridge door open all day.
 
Skimming his paper, I neglected to include the power requirements of cellular infrastructure, LTE cell towers, etc.

I will have to withdrawal my comments until I review that part ....
 
tazeat said:
361 kW-h seems like a fuck ton of power though, that's about 10 kWh a day... The average phone battery is only ~1.6kWh, granted there are charger losses etc, but that seems a bit much.
Click to expand...

Hate to downplay your math there, tazeat, but you need to recalculate those numbers: it's a little less than 1 kWh per day, and the battery output under ideal conditions (of an iPhone 5) is 5.3 Wh. Though boy do I wish they could cram 1.6 kWh capability into a battery, that's 3-4 hours of power for my desktop.

I do think the original 361 kWh number is rather unrealistic, unless they are referring to all the support services that go along with a phone...tower, servers, etc. Still seems a bit high though.
 
I think someone misplaced a decimal. Because an iPhone does not use more power than a fridge.
 
This is why I use an Android phone instead of one of those power sucking iPhones. :p
 
Steve said:
An iPhone uses more energy than a refrigerator? Yeah, but what good is that? You can't play Candy Crush and take duck-face selfies with a fridge. :rolleyes:
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You clearly haven't been refrigerator shopping lately ... ;)

Samsung has had a model out that has a screen and camera. Nude selfies making lasagna not included.
 
This report was bought to generate some hysterical-grade headlines in hopes of advertising a clean coal consortium. It doesn't add up at all, because to imagine that the iPhone "uses more electricity," they added up all the use of the datacenters in the US, divided by number of smartphones, added max power utilization from an inefficient wireless access point running 24x7, and contuous max charging wattage of an iPhone. Of course *my* math says that I charge my iPhone once per day and drain it, that's around 2Ah at 3.3volts, or 6.6watt hours, times 365 days, which is about 2.4kWh. Of course adding every access point you connect to and server your applications contact is going to grow that number, so let's just throw numbers at it until we reach our conclusion. Your "use" of an iPhone might tax the overall national grid more than your refrigerator... but I doubt it.
 
Haha, I'm sorry. There's absolutely NO way a single iPhone uses more power than a refrigerator. Those towers and servers might use a considerable amount of power, but they are hosting thousands of users and smart phones simultaneously too.
 
ekuest said:
the fuck? "if you stack up wireless connections, data usage, and battery charging." meaning what, exactly? theyre counting the yearly energy use of every cell tower and every router ive connected to all year? i call FUD all over this article.
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Hey, at least he didn't include the servers your phone is talking to through said wireless connections.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
Hey, at least he didn't include the servers your phone is talking to through said wireless connections.
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As a matter of fact, that appears to have been the thrust of the article. "Coal powers the cloud"... all cloud resources required to power the smartphones being included in his calculations.
 
People that write these articles and try to pass them off as fact should be publicly shamed and blacklisted. In that order.
 
http://theweek.com/author/carmel-lobello

Karl-Pilkington-Bullshit.jpg



http://www.macworld.com.au/news/iphone-5-costs-less-than-a-dollar-annually-to-charge-74575/#.UgwZvpLDB8E

It costs absolutely fuck all to run and charge your phone and a wireless access point. Have you ever tried to run a fridge from solar? The size of the pannels, inverter and battery capacity are huge. Its about 1000$ worth. To charge your phone with solar is like 50$ for a small portable solar kit. Running a fridge compressor is up there with, vaccum cleaners, heaters and kettles in regards to peak power usage. a 5 watt wall charger with a trickle charge over 2 hours is about .05 amp hours. a fridge can use up to 2000W to 900w when the compressor is going about 40+ amp hours a day. More if its frost free.

This article is pure shit and the person publishing it needs to give up their day job and copy and paste crap from somewhere else.
 
okashira said:
Skimming his paper, I neglected to include the power requirements of cellular infrastructure, LTE cell towers, etc.

I will have to withdrawal my comments until I review that part ....
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Insignificant given the number of phones those towers and infrastructure will serve.
 
LOL. As if the moment I turn off my phone, the wireless and data infrastructure it is connected to will turn off because, as you know, I am the ONLY USER IN THE WORLD.

The guy who wrote this is a publicity seeking fucktard.
 
Wow, nobody actually read the entire article did they; or the linked PFD.

The author extrapolated the entire cost of the use of the phone including all the necessary costs of all the things that make the iPhone or damn near any other phone or computer functional the way they are used in today's world.

Is the article a bit biased...of course.

However read it again and think of the cost of running all ancillary gear needed to allow you full use of your phone...The total cost of all the servers in use, the "Cloud"(s) hell, "Google" and all the millions of servers running 24/7 for business to run not to mention wireless home networks.

Damn little was mentioned about the cost of charging your phone.

Even Steve's quote mentioned all the infrastructure involved.
 
BillR said:
Wow, nobody actually read the entire article did they; or the linked PFD.

The author extrapolated the entire cost of the use of the phone including all the necessary costs of all the things that make the iPhone or damn near any other phone or computer functional the way they are used in today's world.

Is the article a bit biased...of course.

However read it again and think of the cost of running all ancillary gear needed to allow you full use of your phone...The total cost of all the servers in use, the "Cloud"(s) hell, "Google" and all the millions of servers running 24/7 for business to run not to mention wireless home networks.

Damn little was mentioned about the cost of charging your phone.

Even Steve's quote mentioned all the infrastructure involved.
Click to expand...

What about the coffee makers in the break rooms of the datacenters where the cloud servers run? *rolls eyes*

When calculating the power required by the refrigerator, did they include all the power required to mine / transform raw materials, all the power required to run the factories and their climate control, power required to transport, power required for stores that sell the refrigerators?
 
lol, what an idiotic metric, and it's not even applied correctly. Attributing it to even all smartphones, not just iPhones, would still lead to a huge difference between what smartphone users use of online services and the whole enchilada the dumb paper presents.

There is a large majority of online services that are used by everything from banking, investments, desktop/laptops users, and virtually everything else online which are not exclusive to, or even used t all by smartphones.

What a misleading, attention whore paper.
 
Trying to wrap my head around how they are arriving at this, maybe--MAYBE--they are implying you should combine the power consumption of all peripherals (i.e., things like wireless access points, power consumption of storing your data on a cloud server somewhere, etc.), and then the energy to manufacture the device, etc. Okay, yeah, I guess you might arrive at a number that exceeds the power consumption of an efficient refrigerator. In nonsensical narnia land where illogical tendencies reign king.
 
BillR said:
Wow, nobody actually read the entire article did they; or the linked PFD.

The author extrapolated the entire cost of the use of the phone including all the necessary costs of all the things that make the iPhone or damn near any other phone or computer functional the way they are used in today's world.

Is the article a bit biased...of course.

However read it again and think of the cost of running all ancillary gear needed to allow you full use of your phone...The total cost of all the servers in use, the "Cloud"(s) hell, "Google" and all the millions of servers running 24/7 for business to run not to mention wireless home networks.

Damn little was mentioned about the cost of charging your phone.

Even Steve's quote mentioned all the infrastructure involved.
Click to expand...

Yes. But what about the infrastructure involved to manufacture and maintain a refrigerator? It's a biased clickbait comparison. It still doesn't make sense.
 
Do they count the energy needed to make the stuff that you put in the fridge too?
Like they do with the iphone...
 
MatsSvensson said:
Do they count the energy needed to make the stuff that you put in the fridge too?
Like they do with the iphone...
Click to expand...
Did they include all the servers Apple runs for it's cloud service? If not then your comment has no merit.


I do find it odd though, a report by a company that was paid off by one of the big 3 auto companies that says a Prius is dirtier than a Hummer and everyone goes "well of course it does I've been saying that all along" hell to this day there are still people who think that report was true. However you have a report talking about all the power the average iPhone user truly uses and it's bullshit, and well you can't count the towers because thousands of people use them, and all sorts of other stuff. I mean it's an Apple product, where's the bile and venom for commending this analysis on the iPhone :D
 
teh_chem said:
Yes. But what about the infrastructure involved to manufacture and maintain a refrigerator? It's a biased clickbait comparison. It still doesn't make sense.
Click to expand...

Actually the point is just to highlight how much power a smart phone like the iPhone really uses. Not to say your refrigerator is greener. You have an iPhone well it's the same power drain on the system as if you had another refrigerator.
 
Yeah, he's counting the data centers serving the data to the iPhones, and the wireless access points and cellular transceivers...

Also makes the stupid claim "that it now takes more energy to stream a high-def movie than to manufacture and ship a DVD of the same film."

I really call BS on that one. While *MAYBE* if you include the total power consumption of every single device streaming that movie, it takes more energy than manufacturing and shipping the DVD - if you divide only the tiny portion of energy used by the one device (I doubt Apple/Amazon/Netflix/Hulu each have one single server per active stream,) that power will drop significantly. Even then, you would have to add the (notably missing from this study's math) power to *WATCH* that DVD. (Even the most power efficient battery-powered portable DVD player uses more power than an iPhone watching a streamed movie.)
 
And I just noticed that the study was sponsored by coal-power and mining industry groups... AKA: "HEY! iPhones need a lot of power, and we know where to get it! You should support coal if you want your new gadgets to continue to work..."

Completely ignoring the fact that many major data center providers nowadays (Apple, Facebook, Google,) are making major 100%-carbon-neutral power investments for their data centers.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Did they include all the servers Apple runs for it's cloud service? If not then your comment has no merit.


I do find it odd though, a report by a company that was paid off by one of the big 3 auto companies that says a Prius is dirtier than a Hummer and everyone goes "well of course it does I've been saying that all along" hell to this day there are still people who think that report was true. However you have a report talking about all the power the average iPhone user truly uses and it's bullshit, and well you can't count the towers because thousands of people use them, and all sorts of other stuff. I mean it's an Apple product, where's the bile and venom for commending this analysis on the iPhone :D
Click to expand...

Well a Prius does cause eye cancer, so they were probably just trying to stop people from buying it and save everyone's eyes! :D
 
Is this the same as the people that say windows 8 is the best os in the universe?
 
I can see this being referenced by those brain cancer-cellphone people. You know that warm spot behind your refrigerator, that's what your iphone is doing to the right half of your brain (or hip) all day. :-D
 
ekuest said:
the fuck? "if you stack up wireless connections, data usage, and battery charging." meaning what, exactly? theyre counting the yearly energy use of every cell tower and every router ive connected to all year? i call FUD all over this article.
Click to expand...
It's just Apple clickbait here on [H].
 
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