Avast Software gathered data from more than 3 million Android users around the globe in the summer of 2016 to discover which apps are the heaviest on data, memory and battery consumption. In this article, we take a look at the “vampire” apps that quite literally devour and suck the bleed your little window to the digital world dry.
An interesting fact to start with, Pokemon Go can devour a fully charged battery in just 2 hours and 40 minutes. But it’s not the greediest vampire out there; in fact, it’s not even close, Pokemon Go didn’t quite make it into the top 10 performance draining apps.
On top of the podium is Snapchat, the app that has won the hearts of teens and millennials thanks to its short-lived and self-deleting messages, and masks for photos and videos. According to the software firm Avast, it’s the largest predator on battery, storage space and data traffic consumption out there.
The king of virtual music, Spotify, takes the silver, in second place mainly for the space the music you download takes up. Battery drainage is not excessive by any means, but if you’re steaming with you monthly data and not using Wi-Fi, you’ll see your data disappear in a matter of hours.
Wattpad, relatively unknown by most people but quite popular among writers and readers alike ranks No. 3 in the list of most resource heavy apps. This app allows anyone to publish their own stories, but its main drawback is consumption as it seems to have a notifications feature like Facebook, and churns out constant news on updates and followers and continuously checks for new books.
In fourth place, we find the Japanese app, Line. A hugely popular instant messaging app, although far from the likes of WhatsApp and Telegram in terms of the number of users. Its weak point is structural as the system needs a huge amount of resources to work on mobiles and tablets.
Amazon Shopping comes in fifth; the company now has a more recent app on the market in the form of Prime Now, which makes buying on mobile devices a whole lot easier. The classic option for mobile shopping from Amazon is a serious resource drainer as the purchase process needs massive bandwidth for finalisation and approval.
