Less than a decade ago, mobile phones were more or less capable of making calls or sending messages. Now a smartphone can be connected to broadband and have an octa-core processor with several gigabytes of memory, all in the palm of our hand. And while very few of us are using all that power, imagine the amount of potential mobile processing power that is sitting idle.
Companies like Dreamlab are on a mission to change that: with a three-year partnership between Australia's Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Vodafone Foundation, the company is on a mission to harness the power of millions of idle smartphones for a worthy cause: helping to cure cancer
Like the SETI program, this project works by distributing the massive processing required for cancer research. But this time, dormant smartphones are being put to use. To participate, you'll need to download and install the free app from the Google Play Store. Then, the next time you put your phone to charge and it's dormant, the app will launch and smartphone will become part of a massive computing powerhouse to provide super-computing power for the project.
Because the app only activates when your phone is plugged into a charger and not in use, there's no need to worry about draining your battery unnecessarily. Also, according to the company, the data used by the app is apparently negligible.
According to an email to Mashable, the company said that 100,000 Dreamlab apps running on smartphones will be able to process data about 3,000 times faster than they can with their existing resources. With 5 million active users, that number could jump to 1.5 lakh.
Finally, the app lets you choose to support specific cancer research projects, including ovarian, pancreatic, breast, and prostate cancer. You can also specify the amount of data you're willing to allocate from your mobile or WiFi.
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