Measuring Energy Consumption of Cross-Platform Frameworks for Mobile Applications

In this paper we analyze frameworks for mobile cross-platform development according to their influence on energy consumed by the developed applications. We consider the use of different smartphones sensors, e.g., GPS, accelerometer, etc., and features, e.g., acquiring video or audio from the environment. In particular, we have studied how the amount of required energy for the same operation changes according to the used framework. We use an hardware and software tool to measure energy consumed by the applications developed natively, as a web application or using two frameworks, Titanium and PhoneGap. Our experiments have shown that frameworks have a significant impact on energy consumption which greatly increases compared to an equal native application. Moreover, the amount of consumed energy is not the same for all frameworks.