MOBILESoft : G : Reducing Latency in Mobile Apps via Program Analysis

Reducing network latency in mobile applications is an effective way of improving the mobile user experience and has tangible economic benefits. We present PALOMA, a novel client-centric technique for reducing the network latency by prefetching HTTP requests in Android apps. Our work leverages string analysis and callback controlflow analysis to automatically instrument apps using PALOMA’s rigorous formulation of scenarios that address “what” and “when” to prefetch. PALOMA has been shown to incur significant runtime savings (several hundred milliseconds per prefetchable HTTP request), both when applied on a reusable evaluation benchmark we have developed and on real applications.