Hardly anyone is a stranger to hunting for electrical outlets and sockets in unfamiliar places. It has gotten so bad that people come on social media to wish for ‘nokia batteries’ into their new-gen smartphones.
But while most smartphones do not have the best of battery life, the problem may not lie with the phone, but with the apps you’re using or the ones you leave open.
Instant Messaging applications such as Facebook Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and BlackBerry Messenger rank among the worst apps when it comes to battery drain because they are constantly stirring the phone to send or receive a message.
Some applications are in constant connection with the mobile networks because they need an open radio channel to send and receive messages, thereby waking the device from its latent state whenever a message arrives, repeatedly and silently draining the battery. These applications such as Google Search, Facebook, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and YouTube account for the highest data volume consumed and require the most signal capacity.
Amidst video apps, YouTube is the most data-intensive and by extension, battery-draining, because most people watch multiple videos sequentially; while within photo-messaging apps, I believe it is Instagram.
The most battery-efficient applications though, are mail apps including Gmail, Yahoo Mail and AOL mail, as they are designed to reduce the demand on networks (and devices), only connecting to the network and downloading mail when a user opens the app.
The best solution to these battery draining apps is to close them immediately you’re done using them, i.e. do not leave their tabs open; or use them for very short periods of time so they do not overly impact your battery.
Photocredit: Softpedia
