Assessing the Impact of Service Workers on the Energy Efficiency of Progressive Web Apps

Context. Mobile web apps represent a large share of the Internet today. However, they still lag behind native apps in terms of user experience. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are a new technology introduced by Google that aims at bridging this gap, with a set of APIs known as service workers at its core. Goal. In this paper, we present an empirical study that evaluates the impact of service workers on the energy efficiency of PWAs, when operating in different network conditions on two different generations of mobile devices. Method. We designed an empirical experiment with two main factors: the use of service workers and the type of network available (2G or WiFi). We performed the experiment by running a total of 7 PWAs on two devices (an LG G2 and a Nexus 6P) that we evaluated as blocking factor. Our response variable is the energy consumption of the devices. Results. Our results show that service workers do not have a significant impact over the energy consumption of the two devices, regardless of the network conditions. Also, no interaction was detected between the two factors. However, some patterns in the data show different behaviors among PWAs. Conclusions. This paper represents a first empirical investigation on PWAs. Our results show that the PWA and service workers technology is promising in terms of energy efficiency.