Smartphone 'mode' can speed up devices and lengthen battery life
Phones, tablets and other devices slow down over time, no matter how expensive or cutting edge they were when you bought them. Now, researchers from Hanyang University in Korea claim a technology they developed can delay the inevitable. It's called Where's WALDIO or Write Ahead Logging Direct IO, and according to team leader Professor You-jip Won, it's a mode that extends battery life and speeds up phones by minimizing the amount of data a device records. "The core of the newly-developed technology is to record a small amount of data," Won said. "This tech will make it possible to use low-priced flash memory for a long time, like expensive flash memory."
Electronics' flash memories get worn down the longer you use them from saving and deleting data over and over again. Won and his team claim that by running in this mode, which allows a device to keep only necessary data, you can make a used phone work up to 20 times faster and extend its battery life expectancy by up to 39 percent. It's unclear at this point if WALDIO can be feasibly installed on existing devices, or if it will ever be released to the public. But, if you're prepared to grapple with technical language this weekend, check out the group's study (PDF) published on Usenix for an in-depth explanation of how it works. The team's also at the Usenix Annual Technical Conference in Santa Clara, California until July 10th to present the study, if you want to ask them yourself.
[Image credit: PhotoAlto/Sigrid Olsson]
