An Israeli-made application will show you when it is alright to use your mobile phone and how to minimize your exposure to mobile phone radiation.
The application, tawkon, monitors and analyzes your real-time mobile phone radiation as a function of dynamic SAR (specific absorption rate) levels, environmental conditions and phone usage.
“We extract different parameters from the device itself, together with your usage of the mobile device, whether it’s close to your head, distant from your head, the position that you hold the device, whether you are connected to a Bluetooth headset and so on,” explained tawkon co-founder Amit Lubovsky. “All of these parameters are put into our algorithm and the output is your exposure in real-time to radiation.”
The application has a pre-call mode, which is a small icon on the mobile device’s taskbar. The icon will either be red, yellow, or green – like a traffic light – indicating whether it is safe to make a phone call.
“Before making a call, you can look at your device and decide whether you’re in a good position to make call or not,” Lubovsky said. “During a call, we act kind of like an anti-virus. We are running in the background and monitoring your exposure to radiation. When it exceeds a certain threshold, you’ll hear a beep and the phone will vibrate.”
Once tawkon warns the user that the radiation is above the desired level, the user has the option of either continuing the call or receiving “clever suggestions” from the application about how to reduce exposure in that certain location.
The application is available on app stores worldwide and tawkon is currently focusing on Android-based devices. Lubovsky, who said that Apple refused to offer the application on its app store, admitted that tawkon may be a bit problematic because the issue of radiation from mobile phones is still taboo.
“We don’t say that people should stop talking,” he emphasized. “The name of the company is tawkon (talk on). We just say that it should be done in a clever way and we empower the user.”