Android games are played primarily on battery-powered devices such as phones or tablets. Optimize your game's power efficiency to help users play your game longer and give them confidence to start a game session even when their device isn't fully charged.
Use an optimal display refresh rate
Display refresh rate is the speed at which the display panel of a device can change to show new information. Traditionally, handheld devices used a refresh rate of 60Hz, updating the display contents sixty times a second. Modern devices often feature displays with higher refresh rates capable of updating at 90Hz or 120Hz. Higher refresh rates result in smoother user experiences for actions such as scrolling, but increase the power consumption of the display panel.
Games commonly have a target frame rate of 30 or 60 frames per second. If the display refresh rate is higher than the target frame rate of the game, there is no benefit from the higher refresh rate, only increased power consumption. On high-refresh-rate devices, adjust the display refresh rate to match your game target frame rate as closely as possible.
Integrate or enable the Swappy frame pacing library
The Android Game Development Kit (AGDK) includes a frame pacing library known as Swappy. Swappy optimizes the device's display refresh rate to match your game frame rate as closely as possible. If you are using a custom game engine, review the Frame Pacing Library guide to learn how to integrate the library into your engine.
Swappy is already integrated into the Unreal engine (Frame Pacing for Mobile Devices) and the Unity engine (PlayerSettings.Android.optimizedFramePacing) and optimizes the display refresh rate if enabled in your game project.
Call the Android frame rate API
As an alternative to integrating the frame pacing library, use the Android frame rate API to directly adjust the display refresh rate.
Use the Vulkan API for graphics
Android supports two graphics APIs: the older OpenGL ES API and the newer Vulkan API. Vulkan is now the primary graphics API on Android and is more efficient than OpenGL ES. For more information on Vulkan's benefits and how to use it, see Use Vulkan for graphics.
Respond to device thermal conditions
High utilization of the device's CPU and GPU generates heat. Power efficiency drops as the device heats up. If a device gets too hot, it downclocks the speed of the CPU and GPU to reduce power consumption and allow the device to cool. This behavior, referred to as thermal throttling, affects the performance of your game and its rate of battery drain. Use the Android Thermal API to monitor the thermal state of the device to adjust your game's workload to prevent thermal throttling.
Query the device Game Mode
Game Mode is a feature that lets the user specify a preference of whether to trade off performance against battery life, battery life against performance, or select a neutral default. If your game supports variable performance configurations, use the Game Mode API to check for this preference and modify your game settings accordingly.
Additional resources
Unity power efficiency demo sample (GitHub)