Hows your battery doing? Have you noticed the older your device becomes the less the battery seems to get the job done? Well, it seems it is not the age of the device or even the battery that’s the problem. Instead, it just might be the accumulation of apps that build up over time killing your daily battery life. So its the apps fault? Well, in short yes. But not all apps are created equal. Some apps really like the taste of your battery more than others and data is now suggesting Facebook is the app which really likes to pig out on your battery. AVG (of the anti-virus world) was interested in finding out about app behaviour and decided to conduct what they call their first ‘Android App Performance Report’. In gathering the data, AVG tracked app usage form over one million AVG customers (don’t worry, all data collected was anonymous). The data was collected over the middle half of this year (Q2 and Q3) and the usage logs were used to determine the performance impact on battery life, data, volume and storage. In a bid to find the big culprits AVG admitted they ignored apps which had been downloaded less than one million times (via the Play Store).
And the results make for interesting reading. Facebook was crowned as the app which impacted most heavily on battery life, data consumption and storage. In fact, four out of the top ten ‘Performance Draining’ apps were social apps with the rest being made up of communication apps (like BBM) and media apps (like Spotify). AVG also looked at the worst apps for battery drain on startup. Interestingly the top 2 were both Samsung pre-installed apps (AllShareCast and ChatON). Facebook again managed to get into this top 10 (6th) due to its constant background notification checks. In terms of eating storage, the NY Times (Breaking News) app was the worst. Although in fairness, this is probably due to its need to cache and temporarily store news articles. Again, Facebook made it into the top 10 coming in at 4th. Other repeat offenders included Instagram and Spotify. AVG also looked at network traffic hogging (data usage) and it is probably less of a surprise to hear Netflix ranked top due to its heavy reliance on streaming. By now, it also shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise Facebook made the grade with a podium finish 3rd place. Other repeat offenders were again Instagram and NY Times. Although on this occasion NY Times was not the biggest news culprit with the Daily Mail Online app coming in second. Lastly, AVG looked separately at how games impact on resources. Puzzle & Dragons by GungHo was found to be the most resource-hungry game securing the top spot. What was interesting though, was King (the makers of Candy Crush Saga) had three games in the top ten and therefore took the crown of hungriest game developer overall. If you’re interested, Candy Crush Saga was the hungriest of the King apps coming in at 4th place.
So there you go. It seems if you are having issues with your battery your best bet is to uninstall Facebook. The social network giant consistently hit the top 10 across most of the factors AVG looked at. Other culprits to avoid include Instagram, Spotify and NY Times. Not to mention you might want to stay away from Candy Crush Saga and the rest of the Saga clan. If you’re interested to see the full lists then follow the link over to the full AVG report. So what did you think of the findings? Any surprises? Any you thought should have been included that wasn’t? Let us know.