Study Says Ad-Enabled Android Apps Drastically Affect Battery Life
Many of us don’t care for ads because they tend to get in the way, but a new study suggests you should be worried about your battery life more than anything. A research team from Purdue University and Microsoft shows that apps with ads are probably responsible for about 70% of those apps’ battery usage.
The increased usage seems to be due to an ad’s necessity to gather user metrics, geographical location and downloading the ad itself. They found this behavior in Angry Birds free edition, FreeChess and the New York Times app.
But these issues aren’t isolated to apps with ads, the team says. The browser, for instance, uses 15% of the battery life it consumed for tracking the same information ads do. The solution? Simply code better.
They suggest ad providers code their backend and front-end better, and developers also need to find better ways to do behind-the-scenes work. The study was possible thanks to a tool called EProf which allows developers to see how much energy in each thread in any given app is consuming. They plan to open source the tool sometime soon. Find more information about the EProf tool here. [via New Scientist, thanks Han!]