Explanation of this topic
We have many topics about battery drain. These often contains posts of the kind “turned out App X was the problem!”
To make things easier we’re trying to build one list of apps that are known battery killers. If possible, we will add solutions and alternatives.
reply below with your own discoveries and/or links to posts. I will keep updating this first post to include them!
See this post
below for an explanation of what we need.
Furthermore, let’s also add some more informative “tags” to the apps listed here (updated with feedback from the comments below)
- Necessity
- Confidence that the app is problematic
- Does it affect everyone? (related, but not quite the same)
- Only when using, or background drain?
- Source
Inherent to functionality or… ?
- Apps that inherently need a lot of battery to work
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Needless battery drain (lazy inefficient programming, bugs)
Example: an app like SnapChat constantly uses the screen + camera + many CPU/GPU-intensive filters, so what do you expect? On the other hand, it can still be interesting to see how SnapChat behaves as a background app (see below)
Confidence that the app causes an issue
- confirmed: at least two users, preferably more
- possible: have been reported by one person only
Affects everyone?
Modern technology is complex yo! This makes technology behave in not-quite deterministic ways. That’s why we have to rely on real-world data. So sometime apps really cause issue on one phone, but not on the other. It could depend on what you do with the app. On app version. Whether it’s F-Droid or Google Play version? Could be OS related, or subtle differences in hardware.
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affects everyone: Battery issue seems to affect everyone with the app. Example: SnapChat, as mentioned, inherently needs power to do its thing, so everyone using it is affected.
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situational: some users mentions issues, some don’t.
- Example: Bacon Cam bypasses the Camera2 API. However, in the process, it utterly drains the battery like crazy (even if it is used while charging!) when some of its more advanced features like multi-exposure is used. On my phone I simply can’t use it because it just kills the phone even if I start out at 100% with a charger.
Only when using, or background drain?
- When used
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Possible background drain (when it doesn’t always happen, or isn’t confirmed to do so yet)
- Constant background drain
At one point I discovered that the Firefox beta used to have (and may still have, I haven’t checked recently) a bug where telemetry was always on, even if turned off, and using 5% in the background. This is different from, say, a camera app like Bacon Cam that only causes problems while running. The latter may be worth it to some, the former probably pisses everyone off.
Aso, not that active and passive battery drain may both apply.
Source
- Who contributed it to this list?
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Link to original source Was it first mentioned elsewere on this forum, or the rest of the internet?
This isn’t super-solid science, but sourcing information still matters! Also, a bit of appreciation in the sense that your contributions will be written down is always nice :). Maybe it adds some “gamification” where people will try to find and analyze more apps!
PS: Note that I don’t browse the forums every day, so don’t freak out if I take a week or so to react to your contribution!