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Free apps drain battery faster than paid apps

I read that too, doesn't surprise me at all. Maybe that is why my battery life is usually better than what a lot of people report. I always buy the paid version of an app if I like the free version and there is a paid one available.
 
I read the article as well but unfortunately it is not convincing to me. It only uses one app (Angry Birds) with one Mobile advertisement provider Flurry. Flurry is far less popular than Admob (actually it is the first time I heard about it). And power consumption of advertisements depend on a lot factors like refresh frequencies, display color, use of precise location information or not, and how/where/when the advertisements are displayed.

A good study should use at least several free software with different modes of advertisement settings and different mobile ad providers on several different devices with different CPU and memory configuration.

Shengxin
 
Very well said Shengxin its like you where inside my head and writing down my thoughts.Where you?are you the voice in my head?
 
free apps drain 75 percent more power, badly built advertising to blame
Click to expand...


The title is horribly misleading. There is nothing that isn't obvious here. An app that downloads and displays ads uses power in order to perform those functions. The same app, with the ads removed, will use less power. How much less? Well, it will certainly depend on a lot of factors such as 1) how much power the app itself needs to function without ads (if you want to compare %, which the article seems to want to do), 2) the amount of data transmitted to download ads, 3) the type, strength, and speed of the data connection used to obtain the ads, 4) how frequently the ads are displayed, 5) how much processing power is needed to run any code in the advertisements...


There is no way any of this should lead anyone to a conclusion that free apps (overall, in general, or on average) use more battery than paid apps. Why? Not all free apps use ads. Not all apps use the same ad platforms. Some paid apps might offer extra features that use more power.

I hate living in a world where media headlines are written to grab attention at the expense of being factual or truthful.
 
I don't agree that. I am using a free app on my gadget. It does not affect my battery at all. However, output of that app is not what I was looking for. You can see paid app's output is better than free apps.
 
amlothi said:
The title is horribly misleading. There is nothing that isn't obvious here. An app that downloads and displays ads uses power in order to perform those functions.
Click to expand...

Yet it might be helpful to those unaware of the obvious. There might be folk for whom extended battery life is worth paying the $0.99 to upgrade to paid versions of some apps.
 
I don't think it's that obvious, because using more power doesn't necessarily mean using a lot more power.

I did notice, though, that the paid-for version of WordFeud is smaller and a lot more responsive than the ad-supported "free" version of it.
 
Put phone into airplane mode > No Internet > No more ads > More battery

Better method is to buy the payed app ofcourse. But I use the above system alot.
 
Even in airplane mode, it will still run one more line of code, which will naturally use a tiny bit more battery each time it runs. That being said, I agree with amlothi- I also think the article is misleading. I think running an app is going to take so much more energy than not running an app that whether or not it uses advertising is negligible. What uses much more energy is badly coded software that either keeps the phone awake or are constantly making internet requests.

That being said, the Android market has a lot of terrible apps because the developers don't put much energy into it, noting how the iOS market is more lucrative. I do think Android users should consider buying their apps more often than they do. But I think his reasoning behind it is at least a little off- after all, he ends it with a recommendation to turn of your GPS, and apps can't even use that without it being in the permissions (which it's not for most free apps)
 
I've purchased a few apps. Anything that gets constant use is something I like to support. But it has to be a reasonable price.
 
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