The article GreenHub: A Large-Scale Collaborative Dataset to Battery Consumption Analysis of Android Devices, written by Rui Pereira and Marco Couto from High-Assurance Software Laboratory (HASLab), presents a thorough analysis of more than 23 million of samples of data from Android smartphones, in order to understand the efficiency of battery consumption.
The article, written in partnership with Hugo Matalonga (University of Minho), Bruno Cabral, Pedro Carvalho and João Paulo Fernandes (University of Coimbra and CISUC), Fernando Castor (Federal University of Pernambuco), and Simão Melo de Sousa (University of Beira Interior and LISP), was accepted in the scientific journal Empirical Software Engineering, one of the most prominent journals in the field of Software Engineering and empirical studies. Published by Springer, the journal received an impact factor of 3,156 in 2019, and is classified as Q1, according to SCIMAGO, and A, according to Core Rank 2020.
This large amount of data represents the full spectrum of information available, allowing researchers to identify the Android usage and settings that most affect battery consumption. In particular, this work presents a new metric of battery efficiency, the percentage per minute (PPM), which helps understanding specific situations and Android system configurations affecting the battery life. More specifically, the article shows how different versions of the Android operating system, device brands and even device models can negatively affect the battery consumption of the respective smartphone.
In practical terms, the results of this research can help Android manufacturers and developers understanding how they can improve battery consumption efficiency, according to different circumstances and hardware configurations. In addition, the results provide information about which settings (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.), brands and even mobile applications can influence the performance of the devices’ battery, allowing people to make conscious decisions about this question.
It’s important to mention that this research was carried within the scope of the GreenHub, SusTrainable initiative, partially funded by the Green Software Lab project – which includes researchers from INESC TEC and UMinho, as well as the University of Coimbra and the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. This initiative is funded by the C4/UBI – Cloud Computing Competence Centre.
