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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.
智能手機的免費應用程序看起來很劃算，但其中暗含著隱藏成本：手機的電池壽命。這是因為免費軟件往往是用來支持廣告的，而廣告比應用軟件本身更容易將你的電池能量耗光。
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.
研究人員建立了一個叫做能量探測器的工具，用來觀察應用軟件是如何消耗掉電池能量的。然后，他們分析了幾款當下流行的免費安卓（Android）應用程序（像憤怒的小鳥和免費的國際象棋）。結果顯示，這兩個應用程序本身所消耗的電池能量只占游戲消耗能量的四分之一。剩余的四分之三則完全用在了廣告上，例如用戶跟蹤、用戶信息上傳和廣告下載。這項研究結果是在歐洲計算機系統會議上公布的。所以說，既然沒有免費午餐這樣的好事，也就沒有真正免費的應用程序。
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.
該研究小組在用安卓（Android）瀏覽器進行谷歌搜索時，還發現了另外一個導致電池能量泄漏的原因。研究人員的這個搜索就在一瞬之間，但之后 3G手機的硬件處在高功率模式下的時間高達7秒，由此消耗的電池能量遠遠高于搜索本身所消耗的能量。你無法避免這樣的能量消耗——因為這就是3G網絡的工作模式，研究人員如是說。
