Users and Batteries: Interactions and Adaptive Energy Management in Mobile Systems

Battery lifetime has become one of the top usability concerns of mobile systems. While many endeavors have been devoted to improving battery lifetime, they have fallen short in understanding how users interact with batteries. In response, we have conducted a systematic user study on battery use and recharge behavior, an important aspect of user-battery interaction, on both laptop computers and mobile phones. Based on this study, we present three important findings: 1) most recharges happen when the battery has substantial energy left, 2) a considerable portion of the recharges are driven by context (location and time), and those driven by battery levels usually occur when the battery level is high, and 3) there is great variation among users and systems. These findings indicate that there is substantial opportunity to enhance existing energy management policies, which solely focus on extending battery lifetime and often lead to excess battery energy upon recharge, by adapting the aggressiveness of the policy to match the usage and recharge patterns of the device. We have designed, deployed, and evaluated a user- and statistics-driven energy management system, Llama, to exploit the battery energy in a user-adaptive and user-friendly fashion to better serve the user. We also conducted a user study after the deployment that shows Llama effectively harvests excess battery energy for a better user experience (brighter display) or higher quality of service (more application data) without a noticeable change in battery lifetime.