A record-replay based snapshot system for android application

With the popularity of mobile devices like smart-phones and tablets, users are used to obtain information using mobile applications. In the computer era, users were used to visiting Web pages using browsers. Meanwhile, users could add bookmarks of visited Web pages and shared them with others using hyperlinks as known as URLs. However, there are no natural hyperlinks for mobile apps, so users fail to snapshot mobile applications' contents and share them with others. In this paper, we present a record-replay based snapshot framework for Android applications that addresses these problems. When users are using mobile applications, our system transparently tracks the pages jump processes. For those pages that need to execute actions, such as clicking on buttons, filling contents in input box, we also record such actions. When users are interested in visiting pages, they can click the snapshot button and our system will record all useful information as a snapshot. Afterwards, users just need to select a snapshot to open, and our system will properly replay recorded page jump procedures and actions. We have implemented the snapshot system in Android platform. Our evaluation shows that our snapshot system achieves comparative performance and provides good user experience.