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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."

4 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Correction by Tyrannosaur · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ads Eat Your Smartphone Battery

  2. Re:Free? by Noughmad · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Of course, just like writing Slashdot posts on a "free" operating system with a "free" desktop environment and a "free" browser is just drowning me in ads.

    --
    PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
  3. Re:Not always true by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yeah, but then you're supporting the developers, and GP obviously doesn't want to do that.

  4. Misleading article is misleading by flibuste · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a developer of entirely free Android applications (free as in "beer" and in "free of ads"), I take offense at the overgeneralization of the article to "Free Applications". If you are not a careful reader, this may lead you to think that ALL free apps are full of ads AND power eaters.
    A lot of "free" apps don't have ads and don't use more power than any other app. Many behave actually way better than paid ones.
    Stupid article is stupid.