DreamLab, consisting of three-year collaboration between Australia's Garvan Institute of Medical Research and the Vodafone Foundation launched the DreamLab smartphone app and wants to use your idle smartphones for a worthy cause, to help cure cancer.

To participate, all you have to do is download the free Android app from the Google Play Store and make sure your phone is being charged.

Choose the types of cancer research you want to support, whether breast, prostate, ovarian or pancreatic, nominate how much mobile network or Wi-Fi data you'd like to donate, and each night, your phone will solve small problems that contribute to big picture research at the Garvan Institute.

The initial goal will be to see 100,000 smartphone users power up the DreamLab app, which is expected to help crunch data 3,000 times faster than the current rate, and help address the institute's largest challenge.

Designed by B2Cloud, DreamLab, initially available for download on Android with plans already underway for launch on iOS has been built to transform any smartphone into a supercomputer, Vodafone has claimed.

DreamLab will run on both Wi-Fi and mobile networks, if you’re on Vodafone’s service in Australia, you won’t be charged for data transmitted through the app.