Worst apps for draining battery: Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat among apps killing your phone usage time

The worst apps for draining your Android smartphone’s battery life have been revealed in a new report.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, highly popular and feature-rich apps including Facebook, Netflix, WhatsApp and Google Maps all feature in the list.

The report, which was put together by Avast, also identifies the worst apps for hogging data traffic, eating into storage and draining overall performance.

You can improve your phone’s battery life by deleting some of the apps you don’t need.

With Facebook, for instance, you can get rid of the app and use the social network in your web browser instead. You’ll have to keep hold of Messenger though.

Switching from Google Docs, one of the worst apps for affecting overall performance, to Microsoft Word could be sensible too.

Some apps, however, can’t be deleted. In this case, Avast recommends limiting notifications from them and reducing background features, refresh intervals and location data usage.

The categories have been split into two lists – one for apps that automatically run at start-up and another for those that you’ll open yourself.

The 10 worst apps for sapping battery life, which automatically run when you turn your phone on, are:

The 10 worst apps for draining battery life, which users run themselves, are:

Samsung's built-in Video Editor app has risen up the charts, and requires heavy processing and graphical resources.

Meanwhile, the 10 worst apps for hogging data traffic, which automatically run when you turn your phone on, are:

The 10 worst apps for hogging data traffic, which users run themselves, are:

If you're on a limited mobile data plan, the apps listed above are the ones you need to be wary of. Most worrying is the fact that you don't even need to have the likes of Facebook, Instagram and Chrome open for them to munch through your data.

The 10 worst apps for eating into storage, which automatically run when you turn your phone on, are:

The 10 worst apps for eating into storage, which users run themselves, are:

Facebook, Instagram, and Kindle are particularly bad because they store local cache files, photos or books, says Avast.

Apps from both Samsung and Google feature heavily in the lists, which may be because both companies’ offerings come pre-installed on a lot of Android devices.

Finally, the 10 worst apps for draining performance, which automatically run when you turn your phone on, are:

The 10 worst apps for draining performance, which users run themselves, are:

“For many of us, our smartphones are the main device in our everyday lives. Knowing which of our favourite apps are the hardest-hitting on battery life, data usage, and storage is important so we can manage any that we are regularly using on our phones,” said Gagan Singh, the SVP and GM of mobile business at Avast.

“This quarter’s ‘Most Improved’ accolade is shared between picture messenger tool Snapchat, social media giant Facebook and music streaming behemoth Spotify,” the report says.

“Having previously occupied three of the four top spots for performance-draining apps run by users and on start-up, these companies have made a concerted effort this quarter to improve.”