Named and shamed: the worst battery and performance sapping apps

Did someone say poor battery life and resource hogging bloatware? These are all too familiar complaints in the world of Android, so you might be interested in this little collection of the biggest culprits.

Anti-virus provider AVG has collected data from a variety of anonymous users, who all agreed to share information via the AVG Android app, in order to determine which apps are the worst when it comes to draining your precious battery life, performance, and storage.

As you might expect, apps that constantly refresh themselves in the background to pull data from the web are the biggest performance drainers. Facebook’s busy app topped the list, along with Instagram, BlackBerry Messenger and textPlus services also eating up precious resources. Here’s the list of top 10 apps that are most likely to be slowing down your smartphone.

It might not surprise many of you to find that some pre-installed Samsung apps also managed to make one of the lists. Although not the worst culprits when it comes to performance hindrance or data storage, Samsung’s AllShareCast, ChatON, and WatchON services are some of the biggest battery hogs and all run as soon as you start up your device. Facebook again also managed to make this list. 

AVG also compiled lists for the heaviest storage and data plan eaters, although these are a little more dependent on the content of the app than some of the previous categories. Unsurprisingly, Netflix is a big drain on your data plan, but more oddly text and image based news feeds also appear to consume a lot of data and a surprisingly large amount of your device’s on-board storage.

The report also contains a look at some of the most battery and performance draining games on the market. Many of the most popular titles are rather bad for your phone’s battery life, although this is likely to vary quite a bit from device to device. You can read the full report right here.

If you happen to be using any of the big battery or performance drainers listed above, AVG recommends turning off app notifications, limiting refresh intervals for apps that run in the background, and reducing the amount of data that apps are allowed to download. All very sensible pieces of advice.

Have you noticed any other major battery or performance sapping apps? Let us know in the comments below.