Your smartphone can now help cure cancer while you sleepMumbai, Nov 9(AZINS) Our smartphones today are powerful little things. From an era, not ten years ago, when phones were capable of little more than making calls or sending text messages, we now have broadband-connected eight-core processors with many gigabytes of memory right in the palm of our hands. And while many of us will barely even scratch the surface of properly utilizing all of this power, imagine the amount of potential mobile processing power that lies idle these days.

Companies like DreamLab are on a mission to change this: consisting of a three-year collaboration between Australia's Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Vodafone Foundation, the company is on a mission to tap into the power of millions of idle smartphones for a worthy cause: to help cure cancer.

Much like the SETI project from the early day of desktop computing that put PCs to work to help number crunch the big data generated by radio telescopes looking for extra terrestrial life, this project also works by distributing the enormous processing required for cancer research. But this time around, it’s idle smartphones 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 plug your phone in and it sits idle, the app jumps into action and becomes part of a massive computing combine to deliver supercomputing-class ability for the project.

Because the app only becomes active when your phone is plugged into a charger and is not being used, there’s no worry about it draining your battery unnecessarily. Also according to the company the data utilized by the app is apparently negligible.

According to an email communication to Mashable, the company stated that 100,000 DreamLab apps running on smartphones would be able to process data about 3,000 times quicker than they can with their current resources. With 5 million active users, this rate could jump to 1.5 lakh times.

The app also lets you choose specific cancer research projects to support, including ovarian Cancer, pancreatic, breast and prostate. You can also define the amount of data you’re willing to spare on mobile or WiFi.