Readers like you keep news free for everyone.
More than 5,000 readers have already pitched in to keep free access to The Journal.
For the price of one cup of coffee each week you can help keep paywalls away.
Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire
Games like Candy Crush Saga can drain battery life quickly, but they aren't the worst offenders.
# worst offenders
These Android apps are the ones that drain your battery the fastest
Because knowing is half the battle.
IT’S A PROBLEM all smartphone owners experience sooner or later. You use your phone normally and then before you know it, you’re stuck with only a few minutes of battery life remaining and there’s no charger in sight.
Most of that is down to the type of apps you’re using, and more specifically, the ones that are running in the background.
For Android users, security firm AVG have put together a report which highlights the biggest culprits. It’s probably unsurprising that Facebook is the top of the list for overall impact on both battery, traffic and storage, but the two biggest drains at startup are both bloatware apps from Samsung – Beaming Service and Security Policy Updates.
As for games, King’s Candy Crush series has four games in the top five, with only Supercell’s Clash of Clans taking fourth spot. The reason is likely due to their freemium nature, using location for ads and using numerous resources to deliver new features.
While the most resource-heavy apps happened to be social apps with Facebook grabbing top spot. Spotify, Instagram and Amazon Appstore were also identified as major apps that will use up much of your phone’s resources.
And for good measure, the apps that take up the most storage on your phone by temporarily collecting data that it doesn’t delete or by adding more features to the service via updates. Tango Messenger was seen as the biggest offender while the Daily Mail and Facebook followed suit.
So what can you do to rectify this? The obvious one is to not use these apps, although if you find them useful, then you’re probably going to continue using them. AVG recommends turning off features like WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS when they’re not in use so they don’t eat into your battery life when they’re on standby.
It also recommends sorting your apps out by app usage, storage usage, battery usage and data usage to find out which apps are bringing your phone down. In the case of battery usage, if you’re not using an app that uses 5% or more of your battery power, it’s better to get rid of it entirely.
