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Free smart phone apps might seem like a deal. But they can have a hidden cost: your phone's battery life. That's because free apps often serve up ads, which can drain your battery more than using the app itself does.
智能手机的免费应用程序看起来很划算，但其中暗含着隐藏成本：手机的电池寿命。这是因为免费软件往往是用来支持广告的，而广告比应用软件本身更容易将你的电池能量耗光。
Researchers built a tool called Energy Profiler, which breaks down how apps consume energy. Then they analyzed popular free Android apps like Angry Birds and Free Chess. Turns out both apps used only a quarter of their total consumed energy on game-play. The other three quarters went to advertising—things like user tracking, uploading user info and downloading ads. The findings were presented at the European Conference on Computer Systems. So, just as there’s no such thing as a free lunch, there are really no free apps.
研究人员建立了一个叫做能量探测器的工具，用来观察应用软件是如何消耗掉电池能量的。然后，他们分析了几款当下流行的免费安卓（Android）应用程序（像愤怒的小鸟和免费的国际象棋）。结果显示，这两个应用程序本身所消耗的电池能量只占游戏消耗能量的四分之一。剩余的四分之三则完全用在了广告上，例如用户跟踪、用户信息上传和广告下载。这项研究结果是在欧洲计算机系统会议上公布的。所以说，既然没有免费午餐这样的好事，也就没有真正免费的应用程序。
The research team found a different energy leak when they did a Google search on the Android browser. The search happened in a blink. But the phone's 3G hardware stayed in high power mode for up to seven seconds afterward, eating up much more energy than the search itself. You may not be able to avoid that energy suck—the researchers say it's just how 3G networks behave.
该研究小组在用安卓（Android）浏览器进行谷歌搜索时，还发现了另外一个导致电池能量泄漏的原因。研究人员的这个搜索就在一瞬之间，但之后 3G手机的硬件处在高功率模式下的时间高达7秒，由此消耗的电池能量远远高于搜索本身所消耗的能量。你无法避免这样的能量消耗——因为这就是3G网络的工作模式，研究人员如是说。
