Evaluating battery aging on mobile devices

Abstract

Battery-related problems in mobile devices have been extensively investigated in both industry and literature. In particular, battery aging is a critical issue, since battery lifetime decreases as usage time increases. Battery aging primarily causes inconvenience to users by necessitating frequent recharging, and also affects the accuracy of power estimations for mobile devices. Evaluating battery aging and its effects has rarely been addressed in prior works. In this paper, we propose an online scheme to quantify the battery aging of mobile devices. Specifically, we estimate the degree of battery aging as a ratio metric based on patterns of charging time. For example, an estimate of 50% indicates that the battery capacity is only half of full capacity, meaning that the battery usage time is only approximately half that of the new battery's. Our scheme works autonomously on mobile devices and does not require any external equipment. The extensive experiments demonstrated that the proposed scheme quantifies battery aging accurately.