Towards Greener Android Application Development

Empirical studies have shown that mobile applications that do not drain battery usually get good ratings from users. To make mobile application energy efficient many studies have been published that present refactoring guidelines and tools to optimize the code. However, these guidelines cannot be generalized w.r.t energy efficiency, as there is not enough energy related data for every context. Existing energy enhancement tools/profilers are mostly prototypes applicable to only a small subset of energy related problems. In addition, the existing guidelines and tools mostly address the energy issues once they have already been introduced. My goal is to add to the existing energy related data by evaluating the energy consumption of various code smell refactorings and third-party libraries used in Android development. Data from such evaluations could provide generalized contextual guidelines that could be used during application development to prevent the introduction of energy related problems. I also aim to develop a support tool for the Android Studio IDE that could give meaningful recommendations to developers during development to make the application code more energy efficient.