Android Power Calculations
Approaches and Best Practice
Hafed Alghamdi
Overview
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Why Android Devices
Power Efficiency in Mobile Device
Application Development Considerations
Power Consumption Measurement Approaches
Power Consumption Measurement Best Practice
Power Consumption Measurement
Approaches
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Offline Measurement approach
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External measuring device (Ammeter)
It is recommended to measure power with a “fake” test battery
Most of the time fake batteries are not good enough to provide robust electrical
contact.
Online Measurement approach
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Good technique for applications developers
Easy to use inside the code and provide reasonable results
Offline Measurement Approach
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Moonson, Agilent and other Power Monitors
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Very Expensive
Provide accurate results
Yoctopuce digital ammeter
• Open source management software
• It can store data in a database
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Regular Ammeter for one simple task at a time
Online Measurement Approach
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PowerTutor developed by University of Michigan (5% fault )
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Little Eye
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Aimed to support all Android devices
The company was acquired by Facebook and the tool disappeared from the internet
Android Power Profiles
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Supports only HTC G1, HTC G2 and Nexus One Android mobile phones
It can be used directly in your code
Approximation with this framework is the most accurate method for collecting power data
Trepn™ Plug-in for Eclipse
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Easy to use
Provide excellent results
• Little Eye
Trepn™ Plug-in for Eclipse
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Benefits
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Power at battery
CPU cores and frequency
Network states and usage
Display and GPU
GPS and Bluetooth state
Wakelock and Wifilock states
Tool Requirements:
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Eclipse + ADT plugin
Android SDK Tools
Android Platform-tools
A version of the Android platform
A version of the Android system image for the emulator
or just a device
Android ADB interface driver
Trepn Plugin
Power consumption measurement
Best Practice
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Display brightness
Applications and services running in the background
WiFi, GPS, BlueTooth can drain significant amount of power.
USB devices should be disconnected during power measurement
Power dissipation of loudspeaker
Avoid moving the device will activate different sensors and associated device
drivers to process those sensors output.
Q&A