An Empirical Evaluation of the Energy Consumption of using Web Push APIs in Mobile Web Apps – The Case of Telegram

Context. The Web Push API is a popular technology Web developers use to send push notifications to users’ mobile Web apps. Until now, the energy consumption of this technology has not been thoroughly evaluated. Goal. This research aims to empirically assess the impact of using the Web Push API on the energy consumption of mobile Web apps. Method. We conduct an empirical experiment in a controlled environment where several push notifications are sent to Telegram running on an Android device, while measuring its energy consumption. Telegram is executed on two different browsers (i.e., Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox), and push notifications are sent with different frequencies and distributions. The results are analyzed statistically, followed by an effect size estimation. Results. Telegram tends to consume more energy when receiving push notifications on both browsers. However, it tends to consume generally less energy when loaded on Firefox. The frequency of received push notifications leads to higher energy consumption on Chrome, but we obtained mixed results on Firefox. Push notifications received in bursts lead to lower energy consumption than push notifications received evenly over time. Conclusions. This study provides evidence about the impact of Web push notifications on the energy consumption of Telegram. Our results provide an initial foundation for Web developers to make better-informed decisions about the frequency and distribution of push notifications in their Web apps.