Energy-Aware Computing for Android Platforms

Android smartphones and tablets are changing peoples' daily lives. People can now perform tasks on the go that were previously impossible without a laptop or desktop system. The increasingly demanding applications combined with the mobile nature of such systems places heavy emphasis on battery life. Unfortunately, many end users are not satisfied with the battery life of their Android devices. One key challenge developer's face is to understand how their software impacts energy usage. Ideally, a resource within a device should only consume power when needed and otherwise remain inactive. In this survey, we study the aggressive power management techniques underpinning the Android operating system. To aid developer's understanding of application power consumption, we introduce system-wide, function-level power profiling tools and a methodology for energy-efficiency debugging.