Security firm AVG Technologies has just shared its latest AVG Android App Performance Report. This highlights “the top battery, data and storage consuming apps on Android smartphones and tablets, and includes the latest results from Q2 2015.” And what should you kill? Snapchat.
AVG’s audit of the top ten performance killers on Android, tabulated above, highlighted Snapchat as the Number One, with “the highest, overall performance drain. Did you know that while it runs, it makes use of the camera, Wi-Fi/mobile data and GPS functionality simultaneously? This explains the high battery life and traffic consumption.” AVG’s recommendation: “Only use it for short periods of time.”
Number Two on the list applies only to Samsung owners – but there are a hell of a lot of those around. “The top, hidden battery drainer in this quarter was a service memorably called ‘com.sec.android.fwupgrade,’ which is responsible for delivering Samsung
updates over Wi-Fi.” AVG suggests “to apply all updates as soon as possible to avoid these apps having to constantly check and remind you.”
Continuing down the list, Facebook Pages Manager turns out to be a massive storage hog. And Tumblr eats your traffic. “Tumblr consumed more than multimedia streaming services, Netflix and Spotify, combined.” Samsung is also handicapping its users with its own chat app ChatON – “still killing battery life on phones.” But the one which will affect most users is Google Chrome itself, “now the second highest, storage-consuming app on Android. Fix it: Clean up the leftover data stored on your browser, once in a while, to keep this storage hog at bay!”
And for overall impact on performance at startup, the Facebook app unsurprisingly still holds the crown, with a particularly big hit on storage and traffic. But Google’s own Google Play Services and Android Firmware Updater are also notable offenders. Perhaps the OS designer has some work to do in supporting its users.
So, Android peeps, those are the ones to avoid. Because app designers are clearly using their prestige brands to get away with sloppy design, or simply load on features that they assume you’re ready to take a performance hit for. And some manufacturers, as well as Google itself, are key offenders.
When I ran a battery monitor on my Acer tablet, the screen (even set on its lowest brightness) was sucking over 60% of the battery.