Smartphones have come a long long way since their inception almost a decade ago but unfortunately batteries have not been able to keep up with the pace of development.The applications on your smartphone are among the biggest contributors to a quickly draining battery so here are some of the apps (not in any particular order) that I have on my phone which are notorious for battery drain:
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Facebook
A recent video showcased the extent to which Facebook goes to ensure minimal battery drain on a variety of smartphones however any regular user of the social media service will let you know that the app not only hogs resources like RAM but is also a major battery drain culprit
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Facebook Messenger
I promise I’m not putting this app here to throw shade against the company but Facebook Messenger frequents my battery usage statistics list and is also responsible for using a lot of smartphone resources
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Chrome
I use Google Chrome A LOT and that may be the main reason why this app always is among the top battery suckers on my phone. Chrome too uses up a good amount of RAM (see a trend here?)
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Pokemon GO
To play this game you need to keep the GPS switched on as well as a reliable internet connection. Add the fact that you generally have to keep your screen on when hunting Pokemon and you can clearly understand why this app finds a spot on this list. While the game does have a power saving mode, it does little when you’re looking for pocket monsters out in broad daylight
Possible Solutions
My first piece of advice may sound pretty obvious (and a bit stupid) but it is sure to work – reduce your app usage. The less you use an app, the less battery life it will consume (that means you refrain from checking your newsfeed every minute and play games for shorter time periods).
DO NOT manually close applications! You may think keeping an app open in the background will allow it to constantly drain your battery but in reality more power is consumed when applications or services are repeatedly switched on and off.
There are some apps out there that claim to save your battery life but from personal experience I can tell you most are bogus. One app that I have found handy (especially if you choose to root your device) is Greenify. This app lets you “hibernate” other apps and prevents them from using up battery life in the background. This may seem counter intuitive compared to what I said before about manually closing apps but Greenify works by automatically hibernating seldom used apps. (This post was not sponsored by Greenify by the way, or anybody in fact)
Clearly this is not a comprehensive list post of the “Top Battery Killers 2016”, nor did I include many other well known applications that are infamous for battery drain. This list and the suggestions are purely based off of my personal experiences so I hope you got some help and enjoyed.
