A potentially simpler explanation is an A/B test of a potentially CPU-intensive feature, and a misinformed data scientist. Testing a higher-compression image f

A potentially simpler explanation is an A/B test of a potentially CPU-intensive feature, and a misinformed data scientist. Testing a higher-compression image format might effectively be testing relative behavior between an experiment arm with higher data usage and lower battery usage and an arm with lower data usage and higher battery usage. I.e., "testing draining users' batteries." There are too little details in the blog post or the original article to really figure out what's being discussed.