Related papers: Towards Understanding Android APIs: Official Lists…
Recent industrial and academic research has focused on data-driven analytics with smartphones by collecting user interaction, context, and device systems data through Application Programming interfaces (APIs) and sensors. The Android OS…
Android has been the most popular smartphone system, with multiple platform versions (e.g., KITKAT and Lollipop) active in the market. To manage the application's compatibility with one or more platform versions, Android allows apps to…
The packaging model of Android apps requires the entire code necessary for the execution of an app to be shipped into one single apk file. Thus, an analysis of Android apps often visits code which is not part of the functionality delivered…
The permission mechanism in the Android Framework is integral to safeguarding the privacy of users by managing users' and processes' access to sensitive resources and operations. As such, developers need to be equipped with an in-depth…
With over 500,000 commits and more than 700 contributors, the Android platform is undoubtedly one of the largest industrial-scale software projects. This project provides the Android API, and developers heavily rely on this API to develop…
Mobile phones and tablets have become the most widely used computing devices, with a large predominance of the Android platform. As a natural evolution, the development of Android applications has surged and has become a major field of…
Fragmentation is a serious problem in the Android ecosystem. This problem is mainly caused by the fast evolution of the system itself and the various customizations independently maintained by different smartphone manufacturers. Many…
With the rapid growth of mobile apps, users' concerns about their privacy have become increasingly prominent. Android app logs serve as crucial computer resources, aiding developers in debugging and monitoring the status of Android apps,…
Application Programming Interface (API) incompatibility is a long-standing issue in Android application development. The rapid evolution of Android APIs results in a significant number of API additions, removals, and changes between…
Performance issues in Android applications significantly undermine users' experience, engagement, and retention, which is a long-lasting research topic in academia. Unlike functionality issues, performance issues are more difficult to…
Third-party libraries (TPLs) have been widely used in mobile apps, which play an essential part in the entire Android ecosystem. However, TPL is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can ease the development of mobile apps. On the other…
Due to Android's open source feature and low barriers to entry for developers, millions of developers and third-party organizations have been attracted into the Android ecosystem. However, over 90 percent of mobile malware are found…
The open-source nature of the Android OS makes it possible for manufacturers to ship custom versions of the OS along with a set of pre-installed apps, often for product differentiation. Some device vendors have recently come under scrutiny…
Privacy concerns have long been expressed around smart devices, and the concerns around Android apps have been studied by many past works. Over the past 10 years, we have crawled and scraped data for almost 1.9 million apps, and also stored…
Unlike the Web where each web page has a global URL to reach, a specific "content page" inside a mobile app cannot be opened unless the user explores the app with several operations from the landing page. Recently, deep links have been…
Web communication has become an indispensable characteristic of mobile apps. However, it is not clear what data the apps transmit, to whom, and what consequences such transmissions have. We analyzed the web communications found in mobile…
While there have been various studies towards Android apps and their development, there is limited discussion of the broader class of apps that fall in the fake area. Fake apps and their development are distinct from official apps and…
Contemporary mobile applications (apps) are designed to track, use, and share users' data, often without their consent, which results in potential privacy and transparency issues. To investigate whether mobile apps have always been…
The integration of AI techniques has become increasingly popular in software development, enhancing performance, usability, and the availability of intelligent features. With the rise of large language models (LLMs) and generative AI,…
Android allows apps to communicate with its system services via system service helpers so that these apps can use various functions provided by the system services. Meanwhile, the system services rely on their service helpers to enforce…