Modelling Smartphone Usage: A Markov State Transition Model

Abstract

We develop a Markov state transition model of smartphone screen use. We collected use traces from real-world users during a 3-month naturalistic deployment via an app-store. These traces were used to develop an analytical model which can be used to probabilistically model or predict, at runtime, how a user interacts with their mobile phone, and for how long. Unlike classification-driven machine learning approaches, our analytical model can be interrogated under unlimited conditions, making it suitable for a wide range of applications including more realistic automated testing and improving operating system management of resources.