PWA vs the Others: A Comparative Study on the UI Energy-Efficiency of Progressive Web Apps

Developing the same mobile app for multiple platforms is a prominent challenge for practitioners in mobile software development. When starting an app project, practitioners are faced with a plethora of development approaches to choose from. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are a novel and promising approach for mobile cross-platform development (MCPD). As mobile devices are limited regarding battery capacity, the energy footprint of a mobile app should be kept as low as possible. Thus, the aim of this study is to analyze the difference in energy consumption of PWAs and other mobile development approaches with a focus on UI rendering and interaction scenarios. For this, we implemented five versions of the same app with different development approaches and examined their energy footprint on two Android devices with four execution scenarios. The results show that the used development approach influences the energy footprint of a mobile app. Native development shows the lowest energy consumption. PWAs, albeit not the lowest energy consuming mobile development approach, are a viable alternative to other MCPD approaches. Moreover, the web-browser engine used to execute the PWA has a significant influence on the energy footprint of the app.