Reducing the delay and power consumption of web browsing on smartphones in 3G networks

Smartphone is becoming a key element in providing greater user access to the mobile Internet. Many complex applications, which are used to be only on PCs, have been developed and run on smartphones. These applications extend the functionalities of smartphones and make them more convenient for users to be connected. However, they also greatly increase the power consumption of smartphones and many users are frustrated with the long delay of web browsing when using smartphones. In this paper, we have discovered that the key reason of the long delay and high power consumption in web browsing is not due to the bandwidth limitation most of time in 3G networks. The local computation limitation at the smartphone is the real bottleneck for opening most webpages. To address this issue, we propose an architecture, called Virtual-Machine based Proxy (VMP), to shift the computing from smartphones to the VMP. To illustrate the feasibility of deploying the proposed VMP system in 3G networks, we have built a prototype using Xen virtual machines and Android Phones with T-Mobile UMTS network. Experimental results show that compared to normal smartphone browser, our VMP approach reduces the delay by more than 80% and reduces the power consumption during web browsing by more than 45%.