6 ms·

Without ads, Android apps could be more than twice as power-efficient

84 points by GreekOphion 15y ago

dlikhten 15y ago
If you are not paying for the product, you are paying in other ways, this just puts a number on it. If you consider the implications, you are paying quite a bit in power in addition to privacy issues. This is why: a) my gps AND network location is turned off 99.99% of the time. b) I have ad-blocking software which prevents lots of this network overhead. ^^ the above is justified because it actually costs me, want to serve me ads? fine, but not when they come at a price.
- dsr_ 15y ago
  My primary reason to get root on my Android was... well, let's be honest, like every other HN denizen I wanted to explore and control it. But among my other reasons was to be able to run DroidWall, an interface to iptables firewalling.
  - aw3c2 15y ago
    Same for me. Adaway and LBE followed later.
  - jakeonthemove 15y ago
    Thanks for mentioning DroidWall - I can't believe I didn't stumble onto it myself!
- mdwrigh2 15y ago
  > the above is justified because it actually costs me, want to serve me ads? fine, but not when they come at a price How do you expect them to serve you ads? They have to get to your phone _somehow_ so there will always be network overhead. This just feels like an attempt to justify using applications while removing their revenue stream based on impossible requirements.
  - oasisbob 15y ago
    How do you expect them to serve you ads? They have to get to your phone _somehow_ so there will always be network overhead. The amount of network overhead can vary wildly. If the app is polling the ad network API on startup and at a fixed interval, it can keep the radio awake for longer than it would otherwise, or wake it up and keep it in a high power state for the duration of the CELL_DCH timer. It's not an impossible requirement to queue ads, reduce the frequency of polling, and coalesce the ad network API calls with other app network traffic.
- untog 15y ago
  If you are not paying for the product, you are paying in other ways I have ad-blocking software Excuse me while I put on my devil's advocate pants... so, you're using the apps without paying, and cheating the developer out of profit?
  - bsphil 15y ago
    God yes. Putting ads next to something small and clickable is really irritating. My biggest problem is when there is no paid version of the app without ads. Even after blocking them, I'm still left with a bar of precious, unused screen space.
- webwanderings 15y ago
  Is there any adblocker which works without rooting the Android?
  - donniezazen 15y ago
    Adfree Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigtincan.android.adfree&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5iaWd0aW5jYW4uYW5kcm9pZC5hZGZyZWUiXQ. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigtincan.....
- donniezazen 15y ago
  [i]a) my gps AND network location is turned off 99.99% of the time.[/i] My understanding was keeping GPS ON does not amount to any battery loss or power usage. GPS is only active for a few seconds when some app request location.
mcritz 15y ago
I'm surprised that the ad sevices aren't smarter. Wait until on wifi, cache a bunch of ads, share those ads amongst all the apps that use your service. Is this feasible?
- brudgers 15y ago
  I'm not. There is no incentive for better energy utilization. [edit] for advertizement driven software. Energy efficiency is something which goes to the bottom line of handset manufacturers. That this research comes from Microsoft, not Google, shows how different the incentives in regards to energy management are for the two companies' mobile OS's.[/edit] [edit 2]It also illustrates the problem of the commons inherent in the app model. Lots of contact with the ad server is great for each app and poor for overall energy efficiency.[/edit 2]
  - mdwrigh2 15y ago
    I mean, there are incentives. If a battery lasts longer, a user will spend more time in apps, which leads to more ad views. Whether the ad companies are measuring and paying attention to this is a different matter.
    - fluidcruft 15y ago
      They also spend more time in the app when it stutters and lags due to ad load. /snark Otherwise... it's just another reason to learn smali.
  - obtu 15y ago
    Android has a “where did my battery go” UI to provide that incentive.
- mistercow 15y ago
  It should be. But until there's some competitive pressure for them to do that, they won't.
- untog 15y ago
ge0rg 15y ago
Why do "journalists" always forget to link to the primary source? http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mzh/eurosys-2012.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mzh/eurosys-2012.... is the original research paper and also provides interesting insights for smartphone app developers. [edit] Oops, I completely ignored that orange/light grey markup. Must have been an over-active form of ad-blindness.
- wmf 15y ago
  I see a source link. The Verge has an interesting layout, though; IMO it would be more normal to link inline.
- bsphil 15y ago
  I skipped over that even when I was looking for it on a first pass, assuming it was part of the tagging system. Linking to a primary source takes people away from your site. That's why news sites don't like to do it. I'd suggest that the amount of inline linking in blogs would be a counterpoint to that argument, but that's another story.
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Since when is Microsoft so interested in doing Android-related research?
  - shantanubala 15y ago
    Since they started developing Windows Phone? It's a little obvious, but why not study the design decisions of your competitors? Especially when it reveals inefficiencies?
    - nextparadigms 15y ago
      And they thought they should just share it with the world? Please. This is just more of Microsoft's FUD tactics to attack competitors in a dirty way. They were also the ones to pay for that research that uncovered the first Chrome sandbox exploit. I question their motives for all of this.
ravivyas 15y ago
With out a screen your phone could run for weeks.
majani 15y ago
Could someone in ad tech please explain to me: is ad software's inefficiency with power and load times a necessary evil, or is it some gross incompetence from leaders in the field?
- j_baker 15y ago
  I suspect it's neither. It's probably more that advertisers just don't care if their ads use up too much power. Probably the same reason why there are so many annoying Flash ads.
angersock 15y ago
So, obviously, the solution here is to have tighter integration of ad platforms with the underlying system, perhaps an ads repo that installed applications can access and which is optimized for power use. Or, you know, you could charge for your applications and stop putting ads in altogether. It will be a dark day, my friends, when there is kernel support for advertisements.
- beatle 15y ago
  the ad services (Google, etc.) doesn't care about your phone's battery life as long as they can serve their ads. They don't get anything in return if they spend time and resources making their ads "more efficient". These companies don't care about the user experience or providing a better product. They're in the ads business not in the making-a-better-phone business. as far as they're concerned your phone's battery life is a hardware/OS issue. sad but true.
  - megablast 15y ago
    Google certainly has an interest in extending android battery life, you would be silly to suggest anything else.
    - beatle 15y ago
      All evidence to the contrary (including this article).
      - timrichard 15y ago
        All evidence to the contrary? Android releases since Gingerbread have made much more use of black elements (status bar, menu shortcuts, app launcher background). Bright colours on OLEDs are bad news for battery life.
  - notatoad 15y ago
    google is an ad company. the whole reason android exists is to make sure you view as many ads as possible. you think they don't care about how that affects your battery life? if your phone battery dies, you're not viewing ads anymore. the goal is to have you connected to the internet as much as possible. the more usable their stuff is, the better they can accomplish that goal. the making-a-better-phone business is the ad business for google.
j_baker 15y ago
This test was run on a Nexus One, which was released in 2010. I'd be curious to see if they got the same results on a newer phone. I'd be willing to bet that this is mostly because ads require more network requests, which aren't as efficient on newer phones. Something smells of a researcher cherry-picking a result that shows off their tool's results in the best possible light. I suppose I don't have any way to prove that, but I have to ask why the researcher didn't try the test on another phone.
- yuliyp 15y ago
  A Nexus One is a very convenient target for research because it is (a) sold without ties to a carrier or any carrier-specific junk, and (b) flashable with any specific system image you want, including custom AOSP builds without doing any other work (the hardware profile for the Nexus One is shipped with AOSP).
orbitingpluto 15y ago
If an Android app requires location services and that isn't integral to the functionality of the app, then it's bad design on the dev's part. It's easy enough to get decent fill rates for advertisements without latex-gloving user privacy and wasting battery life.
hahainternet 15y ago
I'm so frustrated that this is on the BBC, on The Verge, it's everywhere. It is TOTAL NONSENSE. I don't even need to comment much, if you read the original research you will quickly discover just how poor this paper is. They haven't remotely correctly characterised it and a holistic approach would show the ridiculousness of the claims. People are too busy to read a few pages though, but not too busy to write a bunch of crap and try and get ad impressions.
- joejohnson 15y ago
  Can you elaborate on this?
- yew 15y ago
  It looks reasonable enough to me. I suppose you could quibble with some of the details of how they assign hardware utilization to software components. Apps with heavy same-resource utilization independent of ad serving might face some mischaracterization, although the basic message (advertising represents a non-negligible power drain) remains intact. Am I missing something? I admit to having only read the paper once.
jakeonthemove 15y ago
Ads are definitely not worth the $2 you save for an app that you like and use regularly. This is just another reason why...
- ajross 15y ago
  Very few "regular use" apps are advertising-only. All of them come in a "pro" edition for $2 or whatever for the people who care enough to purchase. I like the subtle platform flame, but it's poorly informed and frankly needless. Which is just another reason why...
andybak 15y ago
Someone on Reddit bothered to read the actual paper and found the following: 4.4 Accounting for High Rate Components The FSM power model does not cover RAM and Organic LED screen (OLED) since these components are accessed at much higher rates (and hence called high rate components) resulting in high overheads in event based modeling. [...] we leave RAM/OLED accounting as future work. If I'm understanding that correctly it's a rather big factor to decide to casually ignore. source: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/r39lz/free_apps_eat_up_your_phone_battery_just_sending/c42rn24 http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/r39lz/free_apps_...
- jeremiak 15y ago
  Coming from a mobile ad network myself, we read the paper and there are a few points we'd like to make. Mainly that the study only tested the first 33 seconds of the app launching, which is the shortest session time I can think of, especially for a chess game... Read the rest: http://www.inmobi.com/devblog/2012/03/21/battery-usage-of-mobile-advertising/ http://www.inmobi.com/devblog/2012/03/21/battery-usage-of-mo...

84 points by GreekOphion 15y ago

If you are not paying for the product, you are paying in other ways, this just puts a number on it. If you consider the implications, you are paying quite a bit in power in addition to privacy issues. This is why: a) my gps AND network location is turned off 99.99% of the time. b) I have ad-blocking software which prevents lots of this network overhead. ^^ the above is justified because it actually costs me, want to serve me ads? fine, but not when they come at a price.

dsr_ 15y ago
My primary reason to get root on my Android was... well, let's be honest, like every other HN denizen I wanted to explore and control it. But among my other reasons was to be able to run DroidWall, an interface to iptables firewalling.
- aw3c2 15y ago
  Same for me. Adaway and LBE followed later.
- jakeonthemove 15y ago
  Thanks for mentioning DroidWall - I can't believe I didn't stumble onto it myself!
mdwrigh2 15y ago
> the above is justified because it actually costs me, want to serve me ads? fine, but not when they come at a price How do you expect them to serve you ads? They have to get to your phone _somehow_ so there will always be network overhead. This just feels like an attempt to justify using applications while removing their revenue stream based on impossible requirements.
- oasisbob 15y ago
  How do you expect them to serve you ads? They have to get to your phone _somehow_ so there will always be network overhead. The amount of network overhead can vary wildly. If the app is polling the ad network API on startup and at a fixed interval, it can keep the radio awake for longer than it would otherwise, or wake it up and keep it in a high power state for the duration of the CELL_DCH timer. It's not an impossible requirement to queue ads, reduce the frequency of polling, and coalesce the ad network API calls with other app network traffic.
untog 15y ago
If you are not paying for the product, you are paying in other ways I have ad-blocking software Excuse me while I put on my devil's advocate pants... so, you're using the apps without paying, and cheating the developer out of profit?
- bsphil 15y ago
  God yes. Putting ads next to something small and clickable is really irritating. My biggest problem is when there is no paid version of the app without ads. Even after blocking them, I'm still left with a bar of precious, unused screen space.
webwanderings 15y ago
Is there any adblocker which works without rooting the Android?
- donniezazen 15y ago
  Adfree Android. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigtincan.android.adfree&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsImNvbS5iaWd0aW5jYW4uYW5kcm9pZC5hZGZyZWUiXQ. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bigtincan.....
donniezazen 15y ago
[i]a) my gps AND network location is turned off 99.99% of the time.[/i] My understanding was keeping GPS ON does not amount to any battery loss or power usage. GPS is only active for a few seconds when some app request location.

mcritz 15y ago

I'm surprised that the ad sevices aren't smarter. Wait until on wifi, cache a bunch of ads, share those ads amongst all the apps that use your service. Is this feasible?

brudgers 15y ago
I'm not. There is no incentive for better energy utilization. [edit] for advertizement driven software. Energy efficiency is something which goes to the bottom line of handset manufacturers. That this research comes from Microsoft, not Google, shows how different the incentives in regards to energy management are for the two companies' mobile OS's.[/edit] [edit 2]It also illustrates the problem of the commons inherent in the app model. Lots of contact with the ad server is great for each app and poor for overall energy efficiency.[/edit 2]
- mdwrigh2 15y ago
  I mean, there are incentives. If a battery lasts longer, a user will spend more time in apps, which leads to more ad views. Whether the ad companies are measuring and paying attention to this is a different matter.
  - fluidcruft 15y ago
    They also spend more time in the app when it stutters and lags due to ad load. /snark Otherwise... it's just another reason to learn smali.
- obtu 15y ago
  Android has a “where did my battery go” UI to provide that incentive.
mistercow 15y ago
It should be. But until there's some competitive pressure for them to do that, they won't.
untog 15y ago

ge0rg 15y ago

Why do "journalists" always forget to link to the primary source? http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mzh/eurosys-2012.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/people/mzh/eurosys-2012.... is the original research paper and also provides interesting insights for smartphone app developers. [edit] Oops, I completely ignored that orange/light grey markup. Must have been an over-active form of ad-blindness.

wmf 15y ago
I see a source link. The Verge has an interesting layout, though; IMO it would be more normal to link inline.
bsphil 15y ago
I skipped over that even when I was looking for it on a first pass, assuming it was part of the tagging system. Linking to a primary source takes people away from your site. That's why news sites don't like to do it. I'd suggest that the amount of inline linking in blogs would be a counterpoint to that argument, but that's another story.
nextparadigms 15y ago
Since when is Microsoft so interested in doing Android-related research?
- shantanubala 15y ago
  Since they started developing Windows Phone? It's a little obvious, but why not study the design decisions of your competitors? Especially when it reveals inefficiencies?
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    And they thought they should just share it with the world? Please. This is just more of Microsoft's FUD tactics to attack competitors in a dirty way. They were also the ones to pay for that research that uncovered the first Chrome sandbox exploit. I question their motives for all of this.

ravivyas 15y ago

With out a screen your phone could run for weeks.

majani 15y ago

Could someone in ad tech please explain to me: is ad software's inefficiency with power and load times a necessary evil, or is it some gross incompetence from leaders in the field?

j_baker 15y ago
I suspect it's neither. It's probably more that advertisers just don't care if their ads use up too much power. Probably the same reason why there are so many annoying Flash ads.

angersock 15y ago

So, obviously, the solution here is to have tighter integration of ad platforms with the underlying system, perhaps an ads repo that installed applications can access and which is optimized for power use. Or, you know, you could charge for your applications and stop putting ads in altogether. It will be a dark day, my friends, when there is kernel support for advertisements.

beatle 15y ago
the ad services (Google, etc.) doesn't care about your phone's battery life as long as they can serve their ads. They don't get anything in return if they spend time and resources making their ads "more efficient". These companies don't care about the user experience or providing a better product. They're in the ads business not in the making-a-better-phone business. as far as they're concerned your phone's battery life is a hardware/OS issue. sad but true.
- megablast 15y ago
  Google certainly has an interest in extending android battery life, you would be silly to suggest anything else.
  - beatle 15y ago
    All evidence to the contrary (including this article).
    - timrichard 15y ago
      All evidence to the contrary? Android releases since Gingerbread have made much more use of black elements (status bar, menu shortcuts, app launcher background). Bright colours on OLEDs are bad news for battery life.
- notatoad 15y ago
  google is an ad company. the whole reason android exists is to make sure you view as many ads as possible. you think they don't care about how that affects your battery life? if your phone battery dies, you're not viewing ads anymore. the goal is to have you connected to the internet as much as possible. the more usable their stuff is, the better they can accomplish that goal. the making-a-better-phone business is the ad business for google.

j_baker 15y ago

This test was run on a Nexus One, which was released in 2010. I'd be curious to see if they got the same results on a newer phone. I'd be willing to bet that this is mostly because ads require more network requests, which aren't as efficient on newer phones. Something smells of a researcher cherry-picking a result that shows off their tool's results in the best possible light. I suppose I don't have any way to prove that, but I have to ask why the researcher didn't try the test on another phone.

yuliyp 15y ago
A Nexus One is a very convenient target for research because it is (a) sold without ties to a carrier or any carrier-specific junk, and (b) flashable with any specific system image you want, including custom AOSP builds without doing any other work (the hardware profile for the Nexus One is shipped with AOSP).

orbitingpluto 15y ago

If an Android app requires location services and that isn't integral to the functionality of the app, then it's bad design on the dev's part. It's easy enough to get decent fill rates for advertisements without latex-gloving user privacy and wasting battery life.

hahainternet 15y ago

I'm so frustrated that this is on the BBC, on The Verge, it's everywhere. It is TOTAL NONSENSE. I don't even need to comment much, if you read the original research you will quickly discover just how poor this paper is. They haven't remotely correctly characterised it and a holistic approach would show the ridiculousness of the claims. People are too busy to read a few pages though, but not too busy to write a bunch of crap and try and get ad impressions.

joejohnson 15y ago
Can you elaborate on this?
yew 15y ago
It looks reasonable enough to me. I suppose you could quibble with some of the details of how they assign hardware utilization to software components. Apps with heavy same-resource utilization independent of ad serving might face some mischaracterization, although the basic message (advertising represents a non-negligible power drain) remains intact. Am I missing something? I admit to having only read the paper once.

jakeonthemove 15y ago

Ads are definitely not worth the $2 you save for an app that you like and use regularly. This is just another reason why...

ajross 15y ago
Very few "regular use" apps are advertising-only. All of them come in a "pro" edition for $2 or whatever for the people who care enough to purchase. I like the subtle platform flame, but it's poorly informed and frankly needless. Which is just another reason why...

andybak 15y ago

Someone on Reddit bothered to read the actual paper and found the following: 4.4 Accounting for High Rate Components The FSM power model does not cover RAM and Organic LED screen (OLED) since these components are accessed at much higher rates (and hence called high rate components) resulting in high overheads in event based modeling. [...] we leave RAM/OLED accounting as future work. If I'm understanding that correctly it's a rather big factor to decide to casually ignore. source: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/r39lz/free_apps_eat_up_your_phone_battery_just_sending/c42rn24 http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/r39lz/free_apps_...

jeremiak 15y ago
Coming from a mobile ad network myself, we read the paper and there are a few points we'd like to make. Mainly that the study only tested the first 33 seconds of the app launching, which is the shortest session time I can think of, especially for a chess game... Read the rest: http://www.inmobi.com/devblog/2012/03/21/battery-usage-of-mobile-advertising/ http://www.inmobi.com/devblog/2012/03/21/battery-usage-of-mo...