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BE SMART ON SMARTPHONES

Brits who charge mobile phones and tablets overnight waste £135m a year

The amount of electricity wasted would be enough to power a city the size of Canterbury for over a year

BRITS waste around £135million a year charging mobiles overnight, researchers claim.

Most smartphones and tablets take around two hours to charge up.

 Charging overnight is a waste of money and electricity for Brits
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Charging overnight is a waste of money and electricity for BritsCredit: Alamy

But tests show that a fully-charged device continues to draw power equal to two thirds of what it has already received.
It costs roughly one penny to leave a phone on charge overnight and slightly more for a tablet.

The soaring number of devices costs the average household £33 a year in electricity.

Department for Energy figures suggest the country spent £900 million charging devices in 2015 — enough to power both Birmingham and Bradford for a year.

With around 50 million smartphones and 15 million tablets in Britain, just half left charging overnight would waste about £135million of energy.

This would power a city the size of Canterbury for over a year.

 Smartphones and tablets cost the average household £33 a year in electricity
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Smartphones and tablets cost the average household £33 a year in electricityCredit: Alamy

Richard Waters, of insurance website Row.co.uk, which ordered the research, said: “This shows what we pay to keep phones and tablets powered up.”

Some phone makers are working on technology to charge a mobile in minutes.


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