Devices can last longer and be more efficient

Actor and presenter Wasim Mirza was not happy when he realized that he would have to change his phone, especially since it was working 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 technology.”

“I thought there was no [security] “The updates were really, really stupid,” says Mirza, who bought the phone in 2016.

“Your battery and screen are still working great. It feels as if the manufacturer is forcing you to upgrade.

He used his phone to manage his online banking, including his production company. “It was important for me to get the latest important software updates,” he says.

In addition to the financial cost, there is an environmental cost to upgrading your phone. About 80% of carbon emissions Of mobile phones resulting from their manufacture. This is known as embedded or embodied carbon.

So, from an emissions standpoint, the more phone users can get the latest software to keep their phones running longer, the better.

An operating system called /e/OS may have been the solution Mr. Mirza was looking for. It’s a free version of Android that extends the life of devices that no longer receive updates, providing a greener alternative to manufacturers’ software.

Mr Mirza’s old phone is among more than 200 supported devices, some of which are 10 years old. When support for the Galaxy S7 Edge ends next year due to hardware limitations, /e/OS will have extended the life of the phone by an additional five years.

“We are making /e/OS available for devices that have not been supported for a long time by their manufacturers,” says Gael Duval, who founded and developed /e/OS.

“We’re trying that [enable them to] Receive all new security updates. Major manufacturers put a lot of bloatware on phones, useless stuff that people don’t use. Over time, this makes things slower. We’ve made the software lighter, so it continues to work efficiently on older devices.

Manufacturers are steadily increasing the supported lifespan of new phones. For this year’s Galaxy S24 phones, Samsung has extended support for seven years, matching Google’s promise for its Pixel devices. Apple will support the iPhone 16 for at least five years.

“Because of the current [processor] “The architecture and the amount of memory on these newer phones will likely still be usable for a very long time, maybe after seven years,” says Rick Vergiver, chief operating officer of /e/OS.

As well as enabling hardware to run longer, software can also be made more carbon efficient when running.

Mobile applications need to be power efficient because phone battery power is limited.

But much software runs on servers in data centers, where there are no such restrictions on power consumption.

“You never think about how much electricity you use when you build server applications, so you don’t do anything to improve that,” says Asim Hussein, executive director of the Green Software Foundation. “There are hardly any tools to even measure it.”

The Software Carbon Intensity (SCI) specification helps measure the carbon footprint of software, and earlier this year, It has become a global industry standard. At its core, the calculation includes both the emissions generated by running the software, and the embodied carbon from the hardware on which it runs.

The idea is to have a carbon intensity score that software developers can use to track progress as they try to reduce emissions from their software.

The specification was created by the Green Software Foundation, which has more than 60 members including Microsoft, Intel, and Google.

“We describe green software as energy-efficient and hardware-efficient software, which means it uses as little physical resources as possible, so there are fewer embodied emissions,” Hussain says.

“We’re also incorporating carbon awareness, which means doing more when your electricity is clean and less when it’s dirty.”

However, calculating the score is not easy.

“the account [the SCI] “It’s amazingly difficult,” admits Mr. Hussein. “The problem is lack of data.”

To help fill this gap, the Green Program Foundation has created a set of models called the Impact Framework. It takes notes of things you can see, like the percentage of server resources used, and turns them into estimates of carbon emissions.

Mr. Hussain’s advice to CTOs? “Trust that if you give your teams a performance indicator like the SCI, they will know what they need to do to improve. You will probably get it wrong the first time, but be as transparent as possible and get feedback.

To help developers improve the energy efficiency of their software, the ecoCode project is compiling a collection of “code smells.” These are hints that the code may be using fewer resources, such as replacing an instruction with another that performs the same task faster.

“This is still an area of ​​a lot of research,” says Tariq Shawkat. He’s the CEO of Sonar, which makes the code analysis software used by the ecoCode project.

“a lot [of code smells] You will fall under the umbrella of very complex code. the second [type] These are things that are not working efficiently: you are refreshing or pulling data more frequently than you need to. Another one is puffy. How do you make your app as simple and streamlined as possible?

Peter Campbell is the Director of Green Programs at Kainos, an IT services company that builds cloud software for its clients. The company has trained 500 engineers, product managers and designers using the Green Software Foundation Free short course.

“We thought if we educated internally and externally, it would magically gain adoption from all our teams,” he says.

“It turns out it doesn’t work that simple. The cultural piece is very difficult, not just to get people to act, but to keep it prioritized. There are so many priorities at our customers that sometimes sustainability isn’t the priority.”

The sector was information and communications technology (ICT). Estimated to calculate 1.4% of greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. A 2018 study estimated ICT will account for 14% by 2040.

There are signs that major companies are taking the problem seriously.

Although only 10% of large global organizations include software sustainability in their requirements today, this percentage is expected to rise to 30% by 2027, according to analysts Gartner.

Hussein adds that decarbonising software is much easier than in many other sectors, such as aviation. “We should press this button now because we can.”