Reducing Energy Consumption of Alarm-induced Wake-ups on Android Smartphones

Abstract

Alarms are often used to set smartphones to perform tasks at scheduled times. Many applications use alarm functionality, and devices consequently experience frequent wake-ups and waste energy. In this paper, we analyze alarm-induced wake-ups in the Android platforms in terms of energy consumption. We propose a "Time Critical Alarm", in which alarms necessarily accompany wake-ups. We then propose, AlarmScope, a scheme to reduce non-critical alarms and thus minimize energy waste. Our evaluation of widely-used applications on Android smartphones shows that the proposed scheme would save between 2.6% and 12.5% of energy use.