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Catalog of energy patterns for mobile applications

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Abstract

Software engineers make use of design patterns for reasons that range from performance to code comprehensibility. Several design patterns capturing the body of knowledge of best practices have been proposed in the past, namely creational, structural and behavioral patterns. However, with the advent of mobile devices, it becomes a necessity a catalog of design patterns for energy efficiency. In this work, we inspect commits, issues and pull requests of 1027 Android and 756 iOS apps to identify common practices when improving energy efficiency. This analysis yielded a catalog, available online, with 22 design patterns related to improving the energy efficiency of mobile apps. We argue that this catalog might be of relevance to other domains such as Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things. As a side contribution, an analysis of the differences between Android and iOS devices shows that the Android community is more energy-aware.

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Notes

  1. StackOverflow is a collaborative Web platform for questions and answers on a wide range of topics in computer programming.

  2. Swift is the official programming language for iOS apps.

  3. GitHub is a social coding platform with a git web interface.

  4. F-droid’s website: https://f-droid.org/ (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  5. Signal is an open source messaging app: https://signal.org (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  6. Amazing open source Android apps curated list available here: https://github.com/Mybridge/amazing-android-apps (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  7. The list is available here: https://github.com/dkhamsing/open-source-ios-apps (Visited on January 26, 2019)

  8. The whole thread can be found here: https://github.com/wordpress-mobile/WordPress-iOS/issues/6057 (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  9. The whole thread can be found here: https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/6394 (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  10. The whole thread can be found here: https://github.com/ChatSecure/ChatSecure-iOS/issues/31 (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  11. An example can be found here: https://github.com/hrydgard/ppsspp/issues/7765 (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  12. Documentation of GitHub REST API v3 available here: https://developer.github.com/v3/ (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  13. AMOLED is a display technology used in mobile devices and stands for Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diodes.

  14. Fibonacci series is a sequence of numbers in which each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers (e.g., 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, etc.).

  15. Energy Efficiency Guide for iOS Apps – Avoid Extraneous Graphics and Animations available here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/EnergyGuide-iOS/AvoidExtraneousGraphicsAndAnimations.html (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  16. This is a real example that can be found here: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/commit/cb9f225f5962d399f48b65d5f855e11f146cbbcb (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  17. Energy Efficiency Guide for iOS Apps – Avoid Extraneous Graphics and Animations available here: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/EnergyGuide-iOS/AvoidExtraneousGraphicsAndAnimations.html (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  18. An example of developers dealing with the strict policy of the iOS app store: https://github.com/owncloud/ios/issues/13 (Visited on January 26, 2019).

  19. Until mid 2018, iPhone X was the only iOS smartphone with an AMOLED screen.

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Acknowledgment

This work is financed by the ERDF — European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Program for Competitiveness and Internationalization - COMPETE 2020 Program and by National Funds through the Portuguese funding agency, FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia with reference UID/CEC/50021/2019, and within projects GreenLab (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016718) and FaultLockerRef (PTDC/CCI-COM/29300/2017). Luis Cruz is sponsored by an FCT scholarship grant number PD/BD/52237/2013. Furthermore, we would like to thank Sofia Reis for the illustrations of energy patterns.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. INESC ID and University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Luis Cruz

  2. INESC ID and IST, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

    Rui Abreu

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  1. Luis Cruz
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  2. Rui Abreu
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Correspondence to Luis Cruz.

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Communicated by: David Lo, Meiyappan Nagappan, Sebastiano Panichella, and Fabio Palomba

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Appendix: Grey Literature

Appendix: Grey Literature

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    Apple Developer Documentation Archive. Energy Efficiency Guide for iOS Apps – Avoid Extraneous Graphics and Animations. URL: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/EnergyGuide-iOS/AvoidExtraneousGraphicsAndAnimations.html

  2. [2]

    Daniel Gultsch. The State of Mobile XPP in 2016. URL: https://gultsch.de/xmpp_2016.html

  3. [3]

    Alternative Push Notification Transport. URL: https://github.com/matrix-org/GSoC/blob/master/IDEAS.md#alternative-push-notification-transport

  4. [4]

    Apple Developer Documention Archive. Energy Efficiency Guide for iOS Apps – React to Low Power Mode on iPhones. URL: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/EnergyGuide-iOS/LowPowerMode.html

  5. [5]

    Stackoverflow. Is gzip compression useful for mobile devices?. URL: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3065920/is-gzip-compression-useful-for-mobile-devices

  6. [6]

    Mitch Bartlett. Does Wi-Fi Consume More Battery Power Than 3G or 4G/LTE?. URL: https://www.technipages.com/does-wi-fi-consume-more-battery-power-than-3g-or-4glte

  7. [7]

    Android SDK Documentation. Modifying your Download Patterns Based on the Connectivity Type. URL: https://developer.android.com/training/efficient-downloads/connectivity_patterns

  8. [8]

    Apple Developer Documentation Archive. Energy Efficiency Guide for iOS Apps – Energy and Networking. URL: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Performance/Conceptual/EnergyGuide-iOS/EnergyandNetworking.html

  9. [9]

    Android SDK Documentation. Optimizing for Doze and App Standby. URL: https://developer.android.com/training/monitoring-device-state/doze-standby

  10. [10]

    Android SDK Documentation. Android Developer Guides — Optimizing for Battery Life. URL: https://developer.android.com/topic/performance/power/

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    Android Developers Youtube Channel. DevBytes: Efficient Data Transfers - Batching, Bundling, and SyncAdapters. URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5onKZcJyJwI

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    Apple’s Core Location Documentation. CLLocationManager. URL: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/corelocation/cllocationmanager

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Cruz, L., Abreu, R. Catalog of energy patterns for mobile applications. Empir Software Eng 24, 2209–2235 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10664-019-09682-0

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