iPhone uses more power than Refrigerator?

[red-beard]

Your iPhone uses more energy than a refrigerator - The Week

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.

361 kW-h/year.

The iPhone has a 2400 mAh 3.7 V battery ~ 9 Wh per charge. How do we get to 361 kWh?

If we add in the tower usage, charger losses (50%), etc, I still don't see how we get to 361 kWh/year.

[gacook]

Hmm...the article mentions wireless connections, data usage AND charging. So...I are they talking about simply the wireless connection in your home, or saying something along the lines of "the average iPhone user piggybacks on X amount of wireless connections per year..."

I dunno, though, didn't care enough to read the article

[GH85Carrera]

Now wait!
You are not supposed to THINK about what is written in an article. Just accept the fact that the author has the same education as that CNN article about how engines work.

[RWebb]

if you stack up wireless connections, data usage, and battery charging

then shouldn't you also stack up transmission losses in the feed to the fridge & power generation inefficiencies?

[BlueSkyJaunte]

Originally Posted by red-beard

The iPhone has a 2400 mAh 3.7 V battery ~ 9 Wh per charge. How do we get to 361 kWh?

If we add in the tower usage, charger losses (50%), etc, I still don't see how we get to 361 kWh/year.

I'd say the infrastructure is the biggest hitter - you don't just "connect to the internet" on 4G. It takes TWENTY hops to get from my cell on T-Mobile to Google. Every one of those hops represents some sort of device that is sucking power 24/7.

Granted, a single request from my single phone accounts for only a fractional percentage of that total power usage, but it adds up. Your phone isn't transceiving only when you're surfing the web. It's checking for updates, downloading email in the background, etc.