Energy Patterns for Mobile Apps

Provide a dark UI color theme to save battery on devices with AMOLED screens.

Whenever an attempt to access a resource has failed, increase the interval of time waited before asking access to that same resource.

Avoid performing tasks that are not visible/valuable to the user and/or quickly become obsolete.

Release resources or services as soon as possible (e.g., wakelocks, screen).

Open/start resources/services only when they are strictly necessary.

Use push notifications to receive updates from resources, instead of actively querying resources (i.e., polling).

Provide an energy efficient mode in which user experience can drop for the sake of better energy usage.

Have a different behavior when device is connected/disconnected to a power station, or has different battery levels.

When transmitting data, reduce its size as much as possible.

Delay or disable heavy data connections until the device is connected to a WiFi network.

Avoid using intensive logging (< 1Hz).

Batch multiple operations instead of putting the device into an active state many times.

Avoid performing unnecessary operations by using cache mechanisms.

Increase time between syncs/sensor reads as much as possible.

Allow users to enable/disable certain features in order to save energy.

Let the user know if the app is doing any battery intensive operation.

Collect or provide high accuracy data only when strictly necessary.

Use data from low power sensors to infer whether new data needs to be collected from high power sensors

Provide means of interrupting energy greedy operations (e.g., using timeouts, or users input).

Whenever possible allow interaction without using the display.

Graphics and animations are really important to improve user experience. However, they can also be battery intensive – use them with moderation.

Perform tasks only when the user specifically asks.