Switching Push and Pull: An Energy Efficient Notification Approach

An increasing number of modern smartphone applications are dependent on information updates from the cloud. To realize such information updates mainly two communication approaches are common, namely push- and pull. Due to different communication patterns both approaches differ in their energy consumption and notification latency. The energy constrained nature of mobile devices entails a sensible selection of the appropriate notification approach. In this paper we provide an evaluation of the energy consumption of both communication approaches. Based on this we provide a transition approach that is able to use the best of both, low latency and low energy consumption. Our results show that energy savings of up to 7% of the total smartphone battery per day can be achieved by switching between both approaches, depending on the context.