New smartphone app from U-M details power consumption

Wednesday, December 2, 2009 | Source: Concentrate

Smartphone applications have come so far there are now apps for apps, courtesy of the University of Michigan.

A combination of graduate students and professors has created the PowerTutor app for Google's Android phone. The app details how much energy is consumed running certain apps and how quickly a smart phone's battery lasts.

"We want to give our users a view of how their phone's battery is consumed," says Lide Zhang, a doctoral student in the university's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and one of the application's developers. She developed the app with fellow student Birjodh Tiwana, professors Robert Dick and Zhouqing Morley Mao, along with Google software engineer Lei Yang.

The application serves two purposes. The first is to educate its users just how their phone's battery charge is spent. The second is to help show app developers how much energy their apps use, allowing them to make more energy efficient apps.

The PowerTutor team plans to update the app and is considering making more. You can find the free app here.

Source: Lide Zhang, a doctoral student in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan
Writer: Jon Zemke