EVALUATING THE PERFORMANCE OF GZIP ALGORITHMS FOR HTTP TRAFFIC COMPRESSION IN MOBILE APPLICATIONS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON IOS AND ANDROID

Study investigates the efficacy of the gzip compression algorithm in optimizing HTTP traffic for mobile applications on iOS and Android platforms. With the exponential growth of mobile data consumption, efficient data transmission remains critical for enhancing user experience, reducing latency, and minimizing cellular data costs. We evaluate gzip’s compression ratios, computational overhead, and energy efficiency across diverse network conditions and data types (e.g., JSON, XML). Our experiments, conducted on real devices and emulated environments, demonstrate that gzip reduces payload sizes by 60–80% for text-based data, with marginal CPU utilization (5–15% increase). However, performance trade-offs emerge at higher compression levels, particularly on low-end devices. This article provides actionable insights for developers to balance compression efficiency and resource consumption in mobile ecosystems.