UK scientists develop cloud-based solution that can save mobile battery life by up to 60%

Scientists have developed a set of tools that identifies elements that drain battery in a smartphone and move them to the cloud through a technique they describe as “code-offloading.”

Stack of smartphones connected to power source. Concept of low battery level problems (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

Scientists from Aston University in the UK have figured out a way that could help save smartphone battery by about 60%.

In a research titled 'Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies Journal', researchers present a new way of optimising mobile applications on a device and improving power efficiency with the help of cloud computing.

Researchers have developed a set of tools that identifies elements that drain battery in a smartphone and move them to the cloud through a technique they describe as "code-offloading." Since the execution happens on the cloud, components on the phone are not used.

Scientists point out that a mobile-cloud setup is not unique concept. Companies like Google use a similar kind of data processing for services like Google Maps. Though this will be the first time a framework has been developed for general usage. Researchers are now extending this mechanism to newer devices like battery powered mobile robots.

Aamir Akbar, who developed the framework said, "So far, we have carried out experiments on two different Android apps. ImageEffects is a prototype and Instagram like app we created and Mather is an open source app available on Github.

"On one, our results showed that battery consumption could be reduced by over 60%, at an additional cost of just over 1 MB of network usage. On the second app, the app used 35% less power, at a cost of less than 4 KB additional data," he added.

Dr Peter Lewis, Aston University explained, "By instrumenting mobile apps and using optimisation algorithms to search for efficient app configurations, the tools identify the most power-hungry parts of a mobile app and move them to the cloud. And since our framework is general-purpose, it can be applied to any mobile app."