An energy bug is a system behavior that causes unexpectedly heavy use of energy and which is not intrinsic to providing the desired functionality. We aim to identify and help diagnose energy bugs in mobile devices by performing distributed, low-overhead sampling, aggregating these data, and applying statistical methods to identify the apps, behaviors, and configurations that are associated with high energy consumption. For example, a user might learn that using their favorite email app while wifi is turned off results in an abnormally high rate of battery drain; the creator of the mail app could then be informed both of the bug and of the circumstances that might be triggering it. The collection platform is an iOS app called Carat, which gives users personalized information about what is likely to be draining their batteries, in exchange for usage data.

More information is available on the Carat project website.