A simplistic way for power profiling of mobile devices

Abstract

Smartphones and tablets are enabling people to perform day to day tasks which were previously impossible to perform without a personal computer. Smartphones and tablets are, by nature, highly dependent on battery life. As a result, a major challenge faced by developers is to understand how their software impact power usage of a device because users of applications tend to evaluate an application not just by its utility and performance but by its impact on battery drainage as well. As a result, developers need to debug the energy efficiency of their applications alongside debugging their performance. In this paper, we explain the power profiling techniques used to determine energy efficiency of applications on Android devices. We also introduce our Software Power Monitor (SoftPowerMon) tool which can aid developers debug applications from an energy perspective and can even help platform developers' develop more efficient systems. Then, using SoftPowerMon, we power profile three different devices: two smartphones and a tablet. We conclude by comparing the performance overhead of our tool to other tools and we show that SoftPowerMon can answer “why” a specific amount of power is consumed on a device as opposed to “how much” power is consumed.