Closed davidpanderson closed 2 years ago
vwbusguy
commented
5 years ago HTC's Power to Give is also noteworthy and that was my first exposure to BOINC when I bought an HTC device a few years ago (and I am on a US carrier): https://www.htc.com/us/go/power-to-give/
HenkPoley
commented
4 years ago Slight update: Samsung Power Sleep seems to no longer be available: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=at.samsung.powersleep
Maybe it only existed for slightly over a year: https://apkpure.com/nl/samsung-power-sleep/at.samsung.powersleep
Android devices were and and are generally under-powered compared to iPhone, so maybe that was a reason. CPU computation wise: iPhone 6S/SE from September 2015 ~= Early 2019 high end Android; iPhone 11 ~= 2.5x, and faster than most laptops 🤷♂️.
Email from a user. To me, this suggests that we survey other mobile volunteer computing apps (this one, Power Sleep, Folding@home), compare them with ours, maybe do a focus group study, and decide what we should to do, with the goal of increasing mobile adoption and retention.
Hello Professor Anderson,
I just wanted to drop you a little note that you should check out Vodafone's (cell phone service provider) collaboration with the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, both in Australia. I also posted a bit ago at the SU forum. Vodafone customers do not loose any allotted data while transferring data related to the app/research (roaming excluded).
https://www.vodafone.com.au/foundation/dreamlab
Garvan Medical Research: https://www.garvan.org.au/Diseases/Research
They partnered together to create an Android cancer research app called DreamLab. The app though was actually created by another Aussie company that specializes in this type of development called Transpire.
https://www.transpire.com/our-work/vodafone-dreamlab/
So, I suggested a few possibilities for Science United:
Partner with a US carrier (or other international carriers) to do something similar in promotion.
Consult with Transpire on building a SU app(s) since they have the experience already.
I wanted to share my impressions with you so you would understand why I am suggesting these ideas. I tested it out on my Samsung tablet because it was a little unclear from their website how the cell data usage works. Although there is a cautionary warning from the Play Store the app may not be optimized, it displays and runs just fine on my S2. Android 4.4 or higher is required.
The interface is clean and fairly intuitive. There's actually 2 projects you can select from (not noted on the main website info), but the app automatically picks one (the newer one) and notes you can go change your selection at any time under the projects tab (which are placed along the bottom). One nice aesthetic item is the app starts off in dark mode (a recent addition I see from the news), fitting in with the idea you run it while you are dreaming (sleeping).
Similar to BOINC, it doesn't run until the battery charge hits 80%, although you can tap a simple button to 'power' it on anytime.
It seems to run nicely in the background without noticable impact to the device use. (Notes say that on iOS, you can't run in background, and app just remain in found to run.)
It does track your contribution per session and per single device. There is no goal tracking though, but there are noted plans for leaderboards in the future. So if you reset your device, uninstall, or switch to another device, the counter starts over. There's no point system, it simply tracks 'calculations' which is a little vague on definition.
I did see after installing you can set BOTH the WiFi and cell data usage limits. WiFi defaults to unlimited. If you reach your limit (period is per each CALENDAR month), DreamLab will prompt you to increase that limit to continue doing more calculations else it will start up again with the new calendar month. The volunteer is responsible for ensuring they check this against their data plan period.
For Power Users, DreamLab leaves a number of things to be desired obviously. For your target audience of every day folks, I'd say it's 95+% of what your are aiming for. The loss of record of work contributed might be disappointing to some even if currently the contribution is oriented device-wise. There's no registration required although you can sign up for the mailing list for future news. There's also a News tab in the app.
I'm thinking I'll suggest this to the Folding@home folks too. Their partnership on the Android app with Sony ended early last year. I never got to trying it out before they closed shop on it, but the app stats were apparently independent of the main stats system. At this time they still haven't released a new app. Also, their latest desktop clients broke screensaver connectivity (it won't display volunteer info or the model of the current protein). Supposedly they are focusing to clean up their website and transition everything to the new scheme, but it appears that is still very much in progress. So don't feel too bad you are behind on things. ;)