On supporting science journalism
If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.
Most smartphone batteries will get you through the day on a full charge. As long as you stay away from apps that are constantly connecting to the network, are poorly written and put a heavy load on the processor.
But which apps are battery hogs? A team of U.C. Berkeley and University of Helsinki researchers is tracking Apple and Android users to find out.
For iOS, music is the most popular app, but the traffic and navigation app Waze is the fastest way studied to drain your battery. Some of the most power-hungry Android apps studied are the Men In Black 3 game and the TeleNav GPS Navigator.
The researchers got their data through a free battery-tracking app they’ve written, called Carat. It’s not the only app that does this, of course. But since it’s been downloaded more than one million times by study participants, Carat has helped the researchers create a chart of the 200 most power-hungry apps for each operating system.
Now if they could just come up with an energy-efficient app that keeps the big new iPhones from bending.
—Larry Greenemeier
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
