Last month in the middle of January, Sony had together with the Folding@Home lab released an application onto the Play Store for use with Sony’s Xperia devices called Folding@Home, which would essentially help to cure diseases by using the phone’s processing power to compute the data of folding proteins research. Scientists could do this research on their own but the process of computing all the data associated with protein folding takes quite a bit of time with the limited amount of computing machines to handle the process, so much time in fact that it would be years before even the slightest amount of data is collected. This is why the app was developed to use the process of computing that data through smartphones.
The app basically runs only during a designated time by the user,(the default is set to start at 12 a.m. and stop at 6 a.m.)so the user is unlikely to be in the middle of using their phone at the time. It also only starts the computing process if the phone is plugged in, on a WiFi connection and at 100% battery power so the app is neither draining your battery or using your resources or data while you need them. Up until now the Folding@Home application has only been available to Sony’s Xperia devices on Android 4.4 Kit Kat, but as of today Folding@Home and Sony have expanded the application to be compatible with a number of new devices as well as those who are running on the Android Lollipop software.
The app states that it is now compatible with Android smartphones and tablets running Android 4.4 Kit Kat or later, but it doesn’t specify exactly which devices are included, so if you like the idea of the app and want to help contribute to disease research, you’ll just simply have to open up the Play Store and see if it’s compatible with the device that you’re using. The app is expected to be opening up to more devices over time, since there are likely some devices running compatible software that may not be able to use it just yet. For anyone who wants to check out, you can head over to the Play Store to grab it and install it.
