The OS elixir: On the impact of operating system upgrades on mobile device lifespan

With the rapid proliferation of mobile devices, the issues of energy consumed to manufacture these devices and the environmental impact of electronic waste comes to the fore. One avenue to improve upon these issues is to increase the lifespan of these devices. Increase in mobile device lifespan can be achieved only if consumers retain their devices longer which could be accomplished by a combination of changes in hardware manufacturing processes, software upgrades, economic incentives, education, to name a few. The goal of this work is to specifically study the impact of operating system (OS) software upgrades on increase in mobile device lifespan. This work attempts to quantify how OS upgrades can bridge the performance gap between older devices and newer devices and motivate users to retain their devices longer. This work takes the approach of employing benchmarking tools to compare the performance of an older device to a newer device before and after an OS upgrade. Multiple devices and user applications are empirically evaluated to arrive at generalizable conclusions beginning with a conceptual framework to quantify the impact of OS upgrades.