If you constantly find that your phone is out of juice, or you’re always having to reach for a charger, don’t look further than your applications.
It’s not always about your phone’s battery life or how much time you spend using an app, some of them are routinely going to drain your battery dry. According to USwitch, these are the apps you need to steer clear of when your battery is in single digits.
#5 Amazon Alexa
Amazon Alexa and Gmail are the fifth biggest drain on our smartphone batteries. USwitch calculated the total app demand on the battery for these two apps at 39, based on the amount of permissions they are able to access and track on a mobile device.
There are things you can do to stop these two applications draining your battery life. For Amazon Alexa, turn off guest mode. This feature uses Bluetooth, which can be a big battery drain. For Gmail, you could consider turning off the Auto-download attachments feature; this means you’ll only download attachments for recent messages when you tap them.
#4 WhatsApp
WhatsApp is using a lot of battery, and gets a total app demand on the battery score of 41. The application might only use narrowly more battery than Amazon Alexa, but it’s still worth considering whether turning off a few of these settings could save you some battery life.
One feature which could be affecting your phone’s battery life is the Media Auto-Download, which is turned on when you first download WhatsApp. This feature downloads photos and videos in the background, even when you’re not actively using the application. Turning it off in WhatsApp’s settings will save your battery, and you can tap the photos and videos you’re interested in downloading instead.
#3 Messenger
Messenger takes the #3 spot, with a total app demand on the battery score of 46. Just like the other top scores in this list, the most draining part of this application is the extra features Messenger is loaded with; games that you can play with your contacts, lots of multimedia content from contacts and advertisers and extensions. Messenger is also using a lot of battery in the background.
If you can do without all of Messenger’s extra features, we’d recommend trying Messenger Lite instead, which uses up a fraction of the battery, mobile data and space on your phone.
#2 Facebook
It should come as no surprise that the Facebook app claimed one of these spots. The social media giant gets a total app demand on the battery score of 50. A significant part of this demand on your battery is the app continuing to run in the background. Despite significant improvements from Facebook in the past couple of years, the application is still taking a toll on our smartphones.
One battery saving tip for this application is to turn off Background App Refresh. This is a setting which allows applications to check the internet for content updates (you can find out more about Background App Refresh here). If you like this feature, leave it on and save battery by turning off Autoplay. Go to Settings > Media, and then scroll down to Autoplay. Select ‘Never autoplay videos’ to stop one of Facebook’s main battery drains.
#1 Google
The top heavy hitter to your battery is the Google app, with a total app demand of 72, significantly higher than Facebook at the #2 spot. It’s exhausting your battery for a few different reasons; the fancy features, regular updates, local data and, of course, background usage and permissions.
To stop this one draining your battery, start restricting and turning off features that you aren’t using. For example, if you aren’t depending on Google Discover, disable the Allow background activity on this feature. Also consider turning off the ‘always listen’ feature of Google Assistant, or switching it off altogether. Finally, clear that data.
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