Free apps may be behind short battery life of cell phones

London, Mar 19 (ANI): Paid applications may probably help your mobile phone battery last longer as almost 75 percent of the energy consumed by free versions of apps is exhausted serving up ads or tracking and uploading user information, a new study including Indian origin researcher has revealed.

According to Abhinav Pathak, a computer scientist at Purdue University, Indiana, and colleagues, running only one Android app could eat up your battery in nearly 90 minutes.

The researchers came up with the finding after developing software to analyse apps' energy usage.

When they assessed popular apps like Angry Birds, Free Chess and NYTimes they discovered that just 10 to 30 per cent of the energy was used powering the app's core function.

For instance, in Angry Birds only 20 per cent is used to display and run the game, while 45 per cent is spent finding and uploading the user's location with GPS then downloading location-appropriate ads over a 3G connection, the New Scientist reported.

The 3G connection stays active for about 10 seconds, even if data transmission is complete, and this 'tail energy' drains additional 28 per cent of the app's energy.

Pathak insists the energy leakage on inefficiencies in the third-party code that developers use to generate profit on free apps is responsible for the superfluous battery consumption. (ANI)