Automatically Analyzing Performance Issues in Android Apps: How Far Are We?

Performance plays a critical role in ensuring the smooth operation of any mobile application, directly influencing user engagement and retention. Android applications are no exception. However, unlike functionality issues, performance issues are more challenging to discover as their root causes are sophisticated and typically emerge under specific payloads. To tackle this problem, researchers have dedicated substantial efforts to proposing automatic approaches for understanding, detecting, and resolving performance issues. Despite these endeavors, it still remains unknown what the status quo of Android performance analysis is, and whether existing approaches can indeed accurately reflect real performance issues. To fill this research gap, we conducted a systematic literature review followed by an explanatory study to explore relevant studies and real-world challenges. Our findings reveal that current tools have limited capabilities, covering only 17.50% of the performance issues. Additionally, existing datasets encompass only 27.50% of the issues and are very limited in size. We also show real-world issue patterns, underscoring the huge gap between the identified techniques and practical concerns. Furthermore, possible solutions are provided to guide future research towards achieving effective performance issue detection and resolution.