How do open source app developers perceive API changes related to Android battery optimization? An empirical study

Abstract

There is an increasing interest shown by researchers and developers in reducing the battery consumption of Android applications. Recently, the battery optimization features such as doze mode, app standby, background execution limits, and background location limits were introduced in the form of API changes. According to the API changes, application developers have to change their source code to manage the behavioral changes caused by operating system limitations. These battery optimization features are evolving rapidly, and the apps show unexpected behaviors until updating the source code. Also, developers find it difficult to cope with the changes. Therefore, there is a need to understand the behavioral changes, application developer's perceptions, and response patterns on the API changes to plan upcoming battery optimization features. In this article, we have collected the relevant GitHub issues from 225 open-source Android repositories and performed a thematic analysis of collected data. This study analyzes the 391 related issues to answer three research questions. This study's important finding is that developers often post issues related to delayed app notifications, inconsistent background location updates, and suspended background tasks, and so on. We found that library developers are showing a quick response to API changes compared with application developers. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd