These Everyday Apps Are Draining Your Phone Battery: Here's What to Do

Is your smartphone battery losing its charge rapidly for no apparent reason? It might be due to some common everyday applications.

Remember when you could use your mobile phone for an entire day or more without worrying about the battery? Nowadays, it's clear that our smartphones lose charge much faster, often running out of juice within 24 hours.

Has smartphone technology declined since the early 2000s? Is this due to planned obsolescence? Actually, our batteries are more efficient today than they were 10 or 20 years ago.

This faster battery drain is due to several factors. Wi-Fi and increasingly advanced screen performances consume more energy. However, the main culprit is the proliferation of apps that severely impact battery life. According to recent studies, we've gone from having just a few apps to an average of 80 or even 100 apps installed on each smartphone within the last 20 years. Only about ten are used daily, and roughly thirty per month.

Unsurprisingly, the most popular apps among users consume the most battery. Streaming services (Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, YouTube), geolocation apps (Waze, Google Maps, Apple Maps), mobile games, and apps that synchronize with multiple services (social networks, messaging, emails) are the main offenders.

A 2019 study by Greenspector and Atos ranked the 30 most popular apps by their energy consumption. According to the report, the Chinese app TikTok tops the list of the most power-hungry apps. The web browser Opera Mini and the social network X (formerly Twitter) complete the top three.

The study also shows that for an average of 3 hours of daily use, these apps account for 77% of battery consumption. Many experts suggest that uninstalling these apps could save several hours of battery life. But don't worry, there's another way to limit their battery consumption without uninstalling them. Here's how:

On Android: