Mobile app usage in 2013 posted 115
percent year-over-year growth. From social networks and games, to banking
and fitness tracking, and much more, we often choose these apps based on their
popularity ratings. IBM Research is working on another way to evaluate apps: by
their energy ratings.
Today, there’s no way to rate how quickly
an app might drain your specific phone
battery. But a power-hungry app – especially those running ads – can
quickly drain a smartphone’s battery.
Scientists Raghavendra
Singh, Ravi
Kothari and Vijay
Mann, at IBM’s research lab in India, patented
a system they’re calling CrowdAmp to predict the battery drain caused by apps –
before a potential user installs them. The system makes its predictions based
on a smartphone owner’s usage pattern, current device setting, and hardware
configuration, as well as the application's power profile as observed on other
users’ phones.
The power
of the crowd
Today,
there’s no way to rate how quickly an app might drain your specific phone
battery.
But a power-hungry app – especially those running ads
– can quickly drain a smart- phone’s battery.
|
CrowdAmp is a lightweight application
that records the usage of various hardware units on a smartphone, including: back
light, cellular service, WiFi and bluetooth. It also records the battery’s
profile for its age and drain time. Based on this data, CrowdAmp uses an app-matching
algorithm to predict the power drain of any app – so, now a smart device owner
will know an app’s predicted battery usage on his or her device before he or
she even installs it.
While not publicly available yet, when users
want to download and install a new app, they could run CrowdAmp to check the battery
usage of an app they want. Through their individual user profile, which combines
a user’s device hardware usage patterns, battery drain time and age, and other software
and hardware details (which get uploaded to a repository), CrowdAmp compares it
with other stored hardware and battery profiles of other users who already
installed the desired application.
CrowdAmp users would also get a chart of
their own device’s usage profile, letting them see which hardware device (and
related activity) is draining their battery the most. The battery drain time
statistics can also be sent to application developers to help them improve
their app’s energy efficiency.
This will
be the first time that mobile app power usage can be predicted before
installation, and also compared between other apps, with respect to their
impact on battery life. As the app market continues to grow, there is no
question that it is important to design and install apps that minimize power
consumption in mobile devices.
IBM has led in total U.S. patents
for 21 year in a row in 2013. Read more about patents like #8,452,352, here.
Labels: battery power, crowdamp, mobile, patent, smartphone