Free apps drain smartphone energy on 'advertising modules'

Researchers have shown that popular free smartphone apps spend up to 75 percent of their energy tracking the user's geographical location, sending information about the user to advertisers and downloading ads.

"It turns out the free apps aren't really free because they contain the hidden cost of reduced battery life," said Y. Charlie Hu,a Purdue University professor of electrical and computer engineering.

...

New findings show that 65 percent to 75 percent of the energy used to run free apps is spent for advertising-related functions.

"We performed an in-depth case study, the first of its kind, of six popular smartphone apps, including Angry Birds, Facebook and Android Browser," said Purdue doctoral student Abhinav Pathak.

The free Angry Birds app was shown to consume about 75 percent of its power running "advertisement modules" in the software code and only about 25 percent for actually playing the game. The modules perform marketing functions such as sharing user information and downloading ads.

"We believe it is mainly to provide information about the user's geographical location so the ads can be more targeted or customized to that location," Hu said.

Findings will be detailed in a research paper being presented during the EuroSys 2012 conference on April 10-13 in Bern, Switzerland. The paper, written by Pathak, Hu and Ming Zhang, a researcher at Microsoft Research, also suggests a general approach for improving the energy efficiency of smartphone apps.