A Comprehensive Study on Software Aging across Android Versions and Vendors

TL;DR

This study investigates how software aging affects Android devices across different vendors and conditions, identifying key causes like Java container bloat and proposing micro-rejuvenation as a mitigation strategy.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of software aging in Android, highlighting vendor and workload impacts, and introduces a micro-rejuvenation approach to mitigate aging effects.

Findings

Software aging causes responsiveness loss and memory depletion.

Vendor and workload differences influence aging trends.

Java container bloat significantly contributes to aging.

Abstract

This paper analyzes the phenomenon of software aging - namely, the gradual performance degradation and resource exhaustion in the long run - in the Android OS. The study intends to highlight if, and to what extent, devices from different vendors, under various usage conditions and configurations, are affected by software aging and which parts of the system are the main contributors. The results demonstrate that software aging systematically determines a gradual loss of responsiveness perceived by the user, and an unjustified depletion of physical memory. The analysis reveals differences in the aging trends due to the workload factors and to the type of running applications, as well as differences due to vendors' customization. Moreover, we analyze several system-level metrics to trace back the software aging effects to their main causes. We show that bloated Java containers are a significant contributor to software aging, and that it is feasible to mitigate aging through a micro-rejuvenation solution at the container level.