These apps use the most data and drain battery life
Have you been wondering why your phone's battery has been draining so quickly? Related question: Are you always on Snapchat?
The video and photo-messaging app has earned itself the dubious distinction of being the number one performance killer of Android phones in the latest quarterly report from AVG Technologies, an online security company.
Snapchat has unseated past power stealers Spotify and Facebook. The app uses a phone's camera, Wi-Fi and mobile data, and GPS capabilities at the same time.
The AVG study took a look at all the top battery and data-consuming apps running on Android smartphones and tablets, using data from over one million anonymous Android app users. The study used internal metrics and usage logs that are collected by Android's operating system in order to figure out which apps had the most impact on data use, battery life, and storage capacity.
"The goal is these reports is not to alarm smartphone users, but rather to enable them to make informed choices about the apps they run on a daily basis," Tony Anscombe, senior security evangelist at AVG Technologies, said in a press release. "Apps are meant to enhance, not to detract from your smartphone experience, but with so many options, we are in danger of overloading our devices."
Beyond a phone's performance, the study looked at other things, like which were the most data traffic-consuming apps. For this quarter, that was Tumblr. The social blogging platform used more data than Netflix and Spotify combined.
That said, Spotify was the biggest storage hoarder, followed by the Google Chrome browser.
A Samsung app that gives users occasional Wi-Fi-facilitated Samsung updates (com.sec.android.fqupgrade) takes a huge chunk out of a phone or tablet's battery life. Given that nine of the top 10 phones identified by AVG were Samsung, this is pretty significant.
AVG Technologies also made a point to differentiate between apps that automatically run at start-up and those that are turned on by the user. The phone run at start-up that overall used up the most data, drained battery life, and took up the most storage was Facebook, followed by Google Play Services and Facebook Pages Manager. Also making that list was The Weather Channel app and Words With Friends, which don't seem to have a compelling reason to turn themselves on and run in the background.
Out of the apps manually turned on by the user, Snapchat topped Amazon Shopping UK and Spotify Music.
Here's some of AVG's breakdown:
Overall performance impact (auto-run at startup):
1. Facebook
2. Google Play Services
3. Facebook Pages Manager
4. BBM
5. Words With Friends
Overall performance impact (run by users):
1. Snapchat
2. Amazon Shopping UK
3. Spotify Music
4. LINE
5. Samsung WatchON
Highest battery drainers (auto-run at startup):
1. Android Firmware Updater
2. ChatON
3. Beaming Service for Samsung
4. Samsung Security Policy Updater
5. Google Play Services
Highest battery drainers (run by users):
1. Samsung WatchON
2. Snapchat
3. Amazon Shopping UK
4.BBC News
5. Walmart
Highest storage consumption (auto-run at startup):
1. Facebook
2. Sp-Mode Mail
3. Instagram
4. Facebook Page Manager
5. Google Play Services
Highest storage consumption (run by users):
1. Spotify Music
2. Chrome Browser
3. Amazon Kindle
4. Aillis
5. Amazon Shopping UK
Highest data traffic (auto-run at startup)
1. Facebook
2. Yahoo! Japan
3. The Weather Channel
4. Antivirus & Security
5. Instagram
Highest data traffic (run by users)
1. Tumblr
2. Netflix
3. Snapchat
4. BBC News
5. Samsung WatchON
