Which Apps Drain Your Battery Fastest?

Some apps drain your cell phone battery faster than others.
Apparently it seems that the free apps cause more battery problems than the paid apps. Why, you might ask? The culprits are those obnoxious ads that come with the free apps. According to an article posted by Trevor Mogg, Digital Trends, “Researchers from Microsoft and Purdue University used a special energy profiling tool to find out more about how apps on Android and Windows Mobile phones affect battery life when run over a 3G connection. In one case in particular, 75 percent of an app’s power requirement was spent not on game play but instead on operating third-party ad services. The researchers also discovered what they called a “3G tail,” where the battery’s energy continues to be sapped even after a particular action, such as the download of information, has completed. With Angry Birds, for example, they found that this so-called 3G tail accounted for more than 25 percent of the app’s total energy consumption.”

Free apps don’t need to tax your battery so drastically.
According to the researchers, by restructuring the source code on some of the apps they used in the study, they were able to reduce their total energy consumption by between 20 and 65 percent. So this begs the questions, “Why not make the free apps more efficient when it comes to battery drain?” Perhaps the free app developers want to make it more attractive to buy the paid apps instead of just downloading the free apps.

The free app ads are also shortening the overall battery life of your device.
With cell phone batteries, the overall life of a battery is determined by the number of charge cycles. Obviously if your battery is being drained and needs to be charged more frequently, you are reducing the number charge cycles in the life of your battery. Now that “free app” doesn’t seem so free, does it? The average overall life of a cell phone battery is 18 months to 2 years. (Have you ever wondered why the cell phone service providers offer you an upgrade to a new phone every 2 years?) You can circumvent that vicious upgrade cycle by buying a replacement cell phone battery, and keep your cell phone for much longer. Think of how this will affect the environment by not filling the landfills with “obsolete” cell phones.

There are a few options to extend the life of your battery which will keep you running those apps longer.  For many smartphones there are extended life batteries available.  These high capacity batteries often double the life of your battery although they do add to the thickness and heaviness of your phone.  Some examples are the Droid Charge extended battery and the HTC EVO extended battery.  Unfortunately iPhone users do not have this luxury.  While there are external batteries and charging cases for the iPhone, the iPhone 4 battery is not easily changed and there is no internal extended battery available. 

Top Battery Draining Apps for the iPhone 4/4S

• Weather App (with location service turned on)
• Reminder App (with location service turned on)
  
• Stock App
• Siri
• Foursquare (with location services running)
• iCloud
• Any app that uses GPS (Maps, Camera, etc)

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