All you cellphone owners who sleep with their handset next to them in bed should take a closer look at the SAR infographic below from tawkon. Tawkon produces a free app for Android that alerts you when the radiation level of your phone climbs to dangerous levels. According to tawkon, the Samsung Galaxy S III is low on the chart with an SAR of 0.34 watts per kilogram (W/kg), while the iPhone clocks in with a hefty 1.1 W/kg. The phone at the top of infographic’s totem pole is the BlackBerry Bold 9700 with 1.37 W/kg.
Of course, SAR values only tell us about the RF exposure characteristics of a cell phone. The values don’t necessarily reflect the amount of RF exposure you receive because that can vary based on how you use your phone. And there is an ongoing debate about radiation and the safety of mobile phones. In the end, phones may or may not cause cancer, but speaking as an iPhone owner, I would play it safe and put the iPhone on my nightstand at night, not on my pillow.
Customers can grab the SAR app from the Google Play Store. iOS owners are out of luck as the app was pulled by Apple because there was “no interest in the app“. It is available in Cydia, though, for those who jailbreak their phones.
[Via Phone Arena, Phandroid and Tawkon]