An Environment for Automated Measuring of Energy Consumed by Android Mobile Devices

Mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and e-readers have become the dominant type of computing platforms. Energy-efficiency has become a key design and operating requirement for applications running on mobile devices. It is further underscored by a growing reliance of consumers on services delivered through mobile devices and their growing complexity and sophistication. A detailed measurement-based characterization of energy needs of mobile applications is important for both device manufacturers and application developers, as it may identify energy-demanding activities and guide optimizations. In this paper, we describe an environment for automated energy measurements of applications running on Android mobile devices. We discuss hardware and software aspects of the environment and several approaches to runtime capturing and timestamping of activities of interest. Finally, we demonstrate the use of the environment in several case studies conducted on Google’s Nexus 4 smartphone.