10 Popular Technology Myths Debunked for You
Technology is growing by leaps and bounds every day. Its development has reached a point where we all have become its slaves. Most of us would blindly follow every technological rule that catches our attention without stopping to investigate its authenticity. This is one habit that we must quit. With new technology flaring up every minute, it is high time that we bust some of the myths related to it. So, here are the 10 popular technology myths debunked for you.
1 Myth: Leaving your phone plugged in the charger all night damages its battery.
Truth: Your smartphone is called so for a reason. Smartphones come with a “battery cycle” of their own. A smartphone battery has only a limited number of charges, after which it starts degenerating.
An authentic smartphone battery comes with an ingrained chip whose main function is to prevent charging beyond its 100% capacity. So, the only thing you should worry about is buying your smartphone from a verified retailer.
However, the rise in temperature when the phone remains plugged into a charger for a long time might deteriorate its battery life. All the modern-day smartphones have lithium-based batteries. Because of this, an overheated phone can degrade its battery.
This doesn’t mean that putting your phone on charge for the whole night will degenerate your battery life, but a little precaution goes a long way. Also, in most cases, discharging your phone all the way to 0% before charging it again acclimatizes the battery. (source)
2 Myth: The more megapixels a camera has, the better the picture it takes.
Truth: It’s not the megapixels but camera sensors that add quality to a photo. These sensors convert light into electrical signals which eventually add colors to every picture. The camera’s lens, composition, controls, and circuitry are other key factors responsible for producing a fantastic picture.
Take into account that the more pixels, the smaller the area size in the sensor to catch the light (the color) corresponding to every pixel and, therefore, the higher the precision must be in both the sensor and the lenses. So much so that there have been cases with camera models from well-known brands whose megapixel resolutions were reduced when the next models were released.
Basically, if you use a poor camera and poor lenses with more megapixels, you will have poor-quality pixels. Or, conversely, if you already have a good camera or smartphone, do not worry if a new model has just been released. Your photos are not going to have much less quality than the newer model.
So, the key ingredient here is the sensor of your phone. It works as “the film” of the camera. It allows the light to pass through it, translates the light into an electronic signal, and, finally, processes it to produce a high-quality image. (source)
3 Myth: Using your phone at a filling station can lead to a fire explosion.
Truth: There has been no documented case of this up to now. To ignite gasoline vapors, you need high voltage. Mobile phones use less voltage than what’s essential to start a fire.
The cast of the popular TV series Mythbusters attempted to explode a mock gas station with a working cell phone surrounded by gasoline vapor. A specific concentration of fuel and air is needed for the gas to explode. So, Jamie Hyneman sprayed a highly flammable vapor into the glass chamber that already had a mannequin with a cellphone inside a car. The myth was soon busted.
So, what fuelled this idea?
Electromagnetic waves, which travel from these smartphones to the closest network tower, are the real culprit here. The energy these waves carry is somewhere around 1.24 mega electron-volts to 12.4 peta electron-volts.
This is considered to be a good amount of energy. So, it is assumed that these waves can create a voltage that might ignite gas vapor. The truth is that the voltage of a cell phone battery is usually quite low, so much so, that it loses the potential to start a fire, and you can forget an explosion. (1, 2)
4 Myth: Deleting files from the Recycle Bin ensures permanent deletion.
Truth: Deleting files from the Recycle Bin or Trash only means that your OS has marked the area empty. Even though it seems that the file data has been wiped off from your computer, it’s still there.
Emptying the Trash or Recycle Bin doesn’t automatically guarantee that the files have been wiped from your computer. It means that they are only removed from the list of files that are on the system. If you want to recover a file that’s been deleted from the Trash or Recycle Bin, you will have to dabble in various data recovery software. Any skilled techie can very easily recover the de-allocated file (the files deleted from the Recycle Bin or Trash).
For permanently deleting your files, you will have to overwrite the free space after their de-allocation. Microsoft offers a free command-line utility called “Sdelete” that prevents data recovery. (source)
5 Myth: Airport X-ray scanners are harmful to you and your devices.
Truth: Airport X-ray scanners do not cause any harm to your devices or to you, for that matter. A very low dose of X-ray hits you when you stand between the detectors. It is not possible to get any damage done under such low radiation.
X-rays can harm you only if your body is exposed to a large dosage. So, when you pass through the scanners at airports, the X-rays are directed toward you in a measured proportion. This means that the radiation emitted out of the scanners is extremely low in dosage.
It bounces off your skin rather than going through your body. The average radiation exposure is considered to be .15 uSv (a unit of radiation) which is lower than the scanners used for official purposes.
Even the American College of Radiology and the American Roentgen Ray Society has declared that the effect of X-ray scanners at the airport doesn’t cause any potential harm to people. Even flight-induced cosmic radiation has a higher dosage than that of airport scanners. So, no, they aren’t dangerous for you or your devices. (source)
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