Why application errors drain battery easily?: a study of memory leaks in smartphone apps

Mobile operating systems embrace new mechanisms that reduce energy consumption for common usage scenarios. The background app design is a representative implemented in all major mobile OSes. The OS keeps apps that are not currently interacting with the user in memory to avoid repeated app loading. This mechanism improves responsiveness and reduces the energy consumption when the user switches apps. However, we demonstrate that application errors, in particular memory leaks that cause system memory pressure, can easily cripple this mechanism. In this paper, we conduct experiments on real Android smartphones to 1) evaluate how the background app design improves responsiveness and saves energy; 2) characterize memory leaks in Android apps and outline its energy impact; 3) propose design improvements to retrofit the mechanism against memory leaks.