Facebook heaviest drain on Android device performance: report
25 Feb 2015
Most popular apps impact performance of Android devices and users who want peak performance from their Android devices need to think twice about installing some of the most popular ones available, according to security firm AVG Technologies.
Social media apps, followed by games and shopping apps, impact battery, speed, storage consumption, and data traffic the company said.
The company has based its findings on data aggregated from its own app currently installed on over 1 million Android devices.
The app measured how installed apps affected performance, which is reported in AVG's findings every quarter. In its recent performance report, the company has singled out Facebook for being the worst overall.
The social network always ran in the background, monitoring activity on the network and sending notifications, etc, the report said.
But such activity is not limited to Facebook, Spotify's music-streaming app directly impacts storage capacity and data consumption, earning which takes it to the second spot on the list.
The top 10 that affect performance are:
- Spotify Music
- Path
- Amazon Android
- Samsung WatchOn
- BBM
- Line
- 8 Ball Pool
- Daily Mail Online
AVG pointed out that Netflix no longer figured in the top 10 overall list, thanks to a November update that lessened battery drain.
Additionally, Amazon's main shopping app likely earned a spot in the top for overall device performance drain as the app saw an increase in use over the quarter as consumers shopped for Christmas.
According to AVG's aggregated, anonymous data, games could have a huge impact on a smartphone or tablet's free storage space and at the moment the titles that took up the most space were Boom Beach and Deer Hunter 2014.
Amazon's main shopping app now figured in the top five for overall device performance drain and AVG noted that the app saw increasing use as consumers shopped for Thanksgiving and for Christmas.
There were several apps for Android that promised to keep unruly apps in check and to keep a device performing at optimum level but AVG's results showed that some, such as Clean Master, actually put more strain on battery, speed, available storage capacity and on data.
According to Yuval Ben-Itzhak, Chief Technology Officer, AVG Technologies, what surprised them was that some of those tools and security updates aimed at improving users' phone experience, were in fact impacting it quite heavily.... so AVG hoped its report would encourage people to understand how to manage their apps to prevent them impacting negatively on their favorite mobile past-times."