Actor and presenter Waseem Mirza was not happy when he realised he would have to change his phone – particularly as it was working just fine. Although the hardware was running smoothly, Samsung ended security updates for the phone in 2020. “I just wish there was a way to get more life out of this old bit of tech.”
Mr Mirza’s old phone is among more than 200 supported devices, some of them 10 years old. When support for the Galaxy S7 Edge ends next year because of hardware limitations, /e/OS will have extended the phone’s life by an additional five years.
Manufacturers have been steadily increasing the supported lifetime of new phones. For this year’s Galaxy S24 phones, Samsung has extended support to seven years, matching Google’s promise for its Pixel devices. Apple will support the iPhone 16 for a minimum of five years.
As well as enabling devices to run longer, software can also be made more carbon efficient when it is operating. Mobile phone apps have to be energy efficient because the phone has limited battery power.
However, working out the score is far from simple. “Calculating [the SCI] is stunningly hard,” Mr Hussain concedes. “The problem is the lack of data.”
To help developers improve the energy efficiency of their software, the ecoCode project is compiling a collection of “code smells”. These are hints that code could perhaps use fewer resources, such as by replacing an instruction with another that does the same job faster.
The culture piece is really hard, not just to get people to act, but to keep prioritising it. There are so many priorities from our customers that sustainability sometimes isn’t the loudest one.
The information technology and communications (ICT) sector was estimated to account for 1.4% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. However, a 2018 study estimated ICT would account for 14% by 2040.
There are signs that big firms are taking the problem more seriously. Although only 10% of large global enterprises include software sustainability in their requirements today, that’s set to rise to 30% by 2027, according to analysts Gartner.
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