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Free Apps Eat Your Smartphone Battery

Posted by Soulskill on from the om-nom-nom dept.

judgecorp writes "Here's a reason to pay for smartphone apps: the free versions can spend three times as much energy finding and serving ads as they do serving their actual purpose. Research from a Purdue University scientist found that as much as 75 percent of the energy used by free apps (PDF) goes on accessing location services, finding suitable advertisements and displaying them."

10 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. AdAway by macemoneta · · Score: 3, Informative

    Android + AdAway (free, in the market) on a rooted device == no ads. It also mitigates the security risks associated with third party ads.

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    Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.

    1. Re:AdAway by idontgno · · Score: 3, Informative

      Mostly. I got bit briefly by Airpush ads, which seem to be immune to hosts redirections, which both AdAway and (my choice) AdFree use.

      To locate the apps that sneak in Airpush capabilities, I use AirPush Detector, which (quoting the author) "detects other installed applications which appear to use known notification ad frameworks and offers the user the ability to easily uninstall them.... This app is open source...."

      --
      Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
    2. Re:AdAway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Maybe DroidWall will work. It only allows network access to apps that you grant permission.

  2. Re:Not always true by Noughmad · · Score: 3, Informative

    All you need is root access, then there is more that one app to setup a redirect.

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  3. free != ads by Kenja · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are free apps without ads and there are paid for apps with ads. Title should be that ads eat up battery life, which is kind of a no brainer.

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    "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
  4. Re:Most apps suck by mark-t · · Score: 3, Informative

    The problem is that the app store business model has generated a type of user that won't generally pay anything over even $.99 for any app, regardless of how useful it might seem to be. The only way to generate revenue from this extremely HUGE section of the market is to have advertisements in the application that can produce a continuous revenue stream from these people, with, of course, an option to make an in-app purchase that disables the ads, and perhaps unlocks additional features.

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  5. Re:Not always true by erroneus · · Score: 3, Informative

    Not necessarily custom firmware. Just root the phone, install AdFree and there you go.

    It helps quite a bit. As I heard it, going to address 0.0.0.0 is faster that 127.0.0.1 though.

    That said, I have done it and yeah, it saves time, screen space and all that.

  6. Re:Not always true by erroneus · · Score: 3, Informative

    One thing that is done is that once root is attained, create a symlink at /etc/hosts pointing to a file on the SD or external_SD and then you can edit it without root. But root has to have happened at some point and in some way.

  7. Re:Not always true by X0563511 · · Score: 3, Informative

    You miss my point.

    Case in point, you have to have a rooted phone for that app to work.

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  8. Re:Not always true by JackieBrown · · Score: 4, Informative

    Adaway works for me.

    It's even open source. You need root, first, though.

    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.adaway&hl=en