Investigating battery consumption in low- end smartphones: preliminary results

Abstract

Due to lack of electricity in the rural communities of Africa, users often have to incur extra expense on recharging their mobile phones. The limited battery capacities of low-end smartphones, therefore, present a barrier to their positive integration with such communities because of their vast networking features that likely lead to their elevated usage, thus, causing faster battery depletion and in turn, escalating recharge costs. This paper presents preliminary results of ongoing investigations on battery consumptions in low-end smartphones in order to estimate their battery life under different usage scenarios, and estimate the surge in communication expense brought about from the frequent recharging. Voice call experiments over WiFi and 3G data, in different network mode combinations, were conducted using three brands of low-end smartphones. Results, compared using analysis of variance and Tukey methods for pairwise comparison, yielded Smart4Mini brand to be the least battery draining, along with Smart Kicka being second best and Galaxy Pocket Neo being least efficient. In addition, the investigations aided in building a platform for future experiments in order to precisely estimate communication costs under different usage scenarios. Dissemination of such information can assist rural users in making well-informed communication expenditure towards purchase and usage of low-end smartphones.