With the exception of a few models, smartphone battery life is getting better and better all the time, especially as manufacturers work out how to maximise the operating system to work with new chips and batteries. But if you’re a big socialiser, your battery woes could be as simple as taking a few breaks.
News this week from security group AVG as it releases a report into things that may well be killing our battery life, and for many of us, its a selection of apps that we may well be using too much.
According to AVG’s “Android App Trend Tracker Report,” frequent background checks may be shooting the battery life of your smartphone in the foot, as Facebook and Instagram take up the number one and four positions for apps that eat into performance dramatically.
Spotify also gets in there, taking up spot number five, while Path and 9Gag also have spots in the top battery chewing apps, telling us that apps that rely on frequent updates such as music streaming and social networking apps tend to be the ones that will reduce your battery life.
The information comes from AVG’s Android app users, which count over a million and track apps in conjunction with battery life, storage use, and data usage.
“The goal of the App Trend Tracker Report is to analyse anonymised data to give users the important information they need to make informed choices about what they can do to continue to enjoy their favorite apps while reducing their impact on their device,” said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, Chief Technology Officer at AVG Technologies.
“It might not be obvious what Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, 8 Ball Pool and Farm Heroes Saga have in common. But in our tech-centric world, running out of battery or storage space at the moment you need it most is hugely frustrating, and that’s why this degree of insight is vital.”
Games also rank pretty highly, which is something we see in our own tests, reducing battery life faster than anything else, especially if the games are particularly intensive to the processing hardware of the phone.
As for helping your battery life, if you are an active socialite on the various networks, it might be an idea to take a break, getting a coffee or a muffin instead of checking for the umpteenth time this hour.
