Energy stealing - an exploration into unperceived activities on mobile systems

Abstract

Understanding the implications in smartphone usage and the power breakdown among hardware components has led to various energy-efficient designs for mobile systems. While energy consumption has been extensively explored, one critical dimension is often overlooked - unperceived activities that could steal a significant amount of energy behind users' back potentially. In this paper, we conduct the first exploration of unperceived activities in mobile systems. Specifically, we design a series of experiments to reveal, characterize, and analyze unperceived activities invoked by popular resident applications when an Android smartphone is left unused. We draw possible solutions inspired by the exploration and demonstrate that even an immediate remedy can mitigate energy dissipation to some extent.