Almost everyone who owns an Android smartphone complains about the poor battery life. While there are a number of reasons as to why Android smartphones require a lot of juice, Android apps itself are a big battery consumer. A study shows that a large amount of the battery drain caused by Android apps is due to the ads and the tracking software embedded in them.
The study included analyzing of some Android apps including Angry Birds, FreeChess, and the New York Times on an Android 2.3 Gingerbread smartphone.
The results showed that 30% of the battery life consumed by Angry Birds was the game itself, and the remaining 70% was consumed by location tracking, user information data, and the download and display of ads.
Even the FreeChess app showed similar results, with 70% of the game’s battery usage going towards ads and ad services. The New York Times and the native Android browser were slightly better, where ads consumed 15% of the battery power used by those apps.
So, I guess this will be a good lesson for all app developers.