Measuring Power Consumption for Image Processing on Android Smartphone

The energy consumption of smartphones can be undertaken in multiple levels of hardware and software. Generally, there are two approaches in measuring power consumption of a smartphone application which are the measurement-based and estimation-based methods. The goal of this study is to compare the two power consumption measuring approaches in quantifying the power consumed by image processing applications in Android smartphone. For measurement-based approach, a simple wattmeter is designed whereas for the estimation-based approach, an Android application called the PowerTutor will be utilized. The wattmeter and PowerTutor will measure the power consumption of eight image processing methods running on modified Android library with self-implemented algorithm called the CamTest. According to t-test analysis that has been conducted, the p values of all of the image processing methods show that there are no significant differences between the wattmeter and the PowerTutor application (p>0.01). Even though measurement-based method is more accurate than estimation-based method in term of measuring power consumption, PowerTutor application proved it provides accurate, real-time power consumption estimation for Android platform smartphones. Application developers still can use PowerTutor as an option to determine the impact of software design on power consumption.