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“a five-year longitudinal static analysis of millions of Android apps to study the increase in their sizes over time and identify various sources of app storage

“a five-year longitudinal static analysis of millions of Android apps to study the increase in their sizes over time and identify various sources of app storage consumption. ” I thought it was going to be about analyzing what’s eating up my phones storage (system storage I’m looking at you) - and note it focuses on Android only. Not sure how much of the analysis extrapolates to iOS apps.

PaulHoule 5y ago
Apple might not make developers have empathy for users, but it makes them pretend that they do. A software dev colleague of mine bought a ZTE phone early in the iPhone era and the immediate thing we noticed is that it would peg the CPU, get hot, and run out the battery in a few minutes. In the desktop world any program is entitled to peg the CPU as much as it likes; if it is blocking the render thread it might get some "tough love" from the OS, but otherwise it's not a problem. In mobile, the CPU is a precious resource. Android has not caught up with the idea that anything is precious.
- cecilpl2 5y ago
  In newer versions of both iOS and Android, your app can get terminated by the OS without warning for misbehaving. Things like too many context switches, using too much CPU, or exceeding some internal and unspecified memory limit.
  - machello13 5y ago
    This isn't only present in "newer versions" of iOS — iOS has worked like that since day 1.
- saagarjha 5y ago
  Amusingly, iOS apps tend to be much larger than Android ones.
  - loloquwowndueo 5y ago
    Oh apps are huge but at least they are upfront about the size - except when they start downloading and caching crap (Amazon app is particularly egregious). :)
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  > Android has not caught up with the idea that anything is precious. I do really not want Google making this decision for me. If they decide to display a warning, or create a new permission for that, fine. But it's really not something for Google to decide in a centralized, "we don't care about individual use cases" procedure.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  > Android has not caught up with the idea that anything is precious. I don't know what your brand or last device with this problem was, but there's a reason https://dontkillmyapp.com/ https://dontkillmyapp.com/ exists. Most of the battery issues were solved years ago with Android 6 (and then the situation improved with 7 and 8). An focused application (or applications, in split view) is able to drain the battery, but that's just intended behaviour. You wouldn't be able to use a battery app or play a mobile game like pokemon Go if the OS would limit the current application. I've only experienced the overheating problem on some midrange to cheap (<€200) Android devices, but that's usually because of the cheap, inefficient SoC that's found in the bottom of the spec sheets. My phone saves battery to the point of killing background apps that I don't want killed. Luckily, I can turn that shit off, though Xiaomi has three different ways to make sure background apps don't get killed that I need to work through.
  - BeFlatXIII 5y ago
    It’s barely related, but it makes me smile slightly that Pokémon Go is still the cross-platform standard bearer for excessive battery drain even five years after launch.

PaulHoule 5y ago

Apple might not make developers have empathy for users, but it makes them pretend that they do. A software dev colleague of mine bought a ZTE phone early in the iPhone era and the immediate thing we noticed is that it would peg the CPU, get hot, and run out the battery in a few minutes. In the desktop world any program is entitled to peg the CPU as much as it likes; if it is blocking the render thread it might get some "tough love" from the OS, but otherwise it's not a problem. In mobile, the CPU is a precious resource. Android has not caught up with the idea that anything is precious.

cecilpl2 5y ago
In newer versions of both iOS and Android, your app can get terminated by the OS without warning for misbehaving. Things like too many context switches, using too much CPU, or exceeding some internal and unspecified memory limit.
- machello13 5y ago
  This isn't only present in "newer versions" of iOS — iOS has worked like that since day 1.
saagarjha 5y ago
Amusingly, iOS apps tend to be much larger than Android ones.
- loloquwowndueo 5y ago
  Oh apps are huge but at least they are upfront about the size - except when they start downloading and caching crap (Amazon app is particularly egregious). :)
marcosdumay 5y ago
> Android has not caught up with the idea that anything is precious. I do really not want Google making this decision for me. If they decide to display a warning, or create a new permission for that, fine. But it's really not something for Google to decide in a centralized, "we don't care about individual use cases" procedure.
jeroenhd 5y ago
> Android has not caught up with the idea that anything is precious. I don't know what your brand or last device with this problem was, but there's a reason https://dontkillmyapp.com/ https://dontkillmyapp.com/ exists. Most of the battery issues were solved years ago with Android 6 (and then the situation improved with 7 and 8). An focused application (or applications, in split view) is able to drain the battery, but that's just intended behaviour. You wouldn't be able to use a battery app or play a mobile game like pokemon Go if the OS would limit the current application. I've only experienced the overheating problem on some midrange to cheap (<€200) Android devices, but that's usually because of the cheap, inefficient SoC that's found in the bottom of the spec sheets. My phone saves battery to the point of killing background apps that I don't want killed. Luckily, I can turn that shit off, though Xiaomi has three different ways to make sure background apps don't get killed that I need to work through.
- BeFlatXIII 5y ago
  It’s barely related, but it makes me smile slightly that Pokémon Go is still the cross-platform standard bearer for excessive battery drain even five years after launch.