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I really doubt battery usage is the #1 thing users care about...I'd imagine users care about intuitiveness, usability, value way before worrying an app kills their batter 3% faster than other apps...

Get a phone that's a few years old, with a battery whose capacity is severely reduced. Use it as your only phone for a month or two. See how you feel about battery-draining apps then.

He said compromise you talk in absolutes.

Doing load balancing at the client level if you can for example is not something that's going to significantly increase power usage but it has the opportunity to reduce infrastructure cost at the expense of complexity. That's the sort of compromise I'm taking about.

Gotcha. For load balancing in particular, one is better off doing it server-side. Many reasons, one among them being ability to change load balancing strategies in face of unforeseen circumstances.