Popular Android Battery Destroying Apps and how to stop them Automatically

4. News Apps like CNN, BBC, Flipboard news apps

I always disable auto-sync/download on all my news apps whenever I need to extend my phone’s battery life. The news is part of the civilised society and the most popular news apps make reading news and staying in a form easier. I have come to the realization that I only need one good news app at a time. I read others on the internet through my web browsers.

From BCC to CNN, to NBC News most of these applications are huge battery drainers.  The reason for this though is because, in order for these apps to provide you with the latest and greatest, they often have to run in the background in order for the apps to constantly check feeds for the news that is most pertinent to you.

4 Amazon App for Android

Unfortunately, if this very app will make me lose 40% of my battery usage, I will still keep it installed. I use this app so frequently. the only tweak I performed on the app is by disabling notifications on it. The Amazon shopping app is a pretty heavy application.  It works very similarly to that of a news app as described in the previous post.  The app constantly runs in the background- by running in the background, this gives the app the ability to consistently ping Amazon servers for any notifications that you may or may not be aware of.

5. Microsoft Outlook App for Android

Too bad as this is one of my favourite apps. I use this to manage all my email. I will not give up on it because I am so used to it. Microsoft Outlook is consistently on Avast’s list of applications that kill your battery.  This app constantly runs in the background to check your inbox for any new mail.  This is purposefully done to keep you up to date on any important messages.  The problem with this is that it will constantly run the background.

6. The frustration of being a Samsung phone user. Their default apps are so heavy on battery. 

Most if not all Samsung phones run on Android OS.  The unfortunate part about this is that a lot of Samsung phones come pre-installed with a lot of their applications.  Samsung’s WatchON, AllShare, etc are some of the most powerful tools that the platform can offer; however, this does not come without a cost.  They are huge battery drainers.  Unfortunately, unless you are able to root your device, it is not possible to remove these apps.

Fortunately, there is a solution to this problem.  You can go to Settings > Applications > Applications Manager > and tap on the Samsung Link App.  From there you are able to uncheck notifications.  Make sure to clear the data as well and “disable” this feature.  Do this for all Samsung applications you don’t use at all.

7. Tinder dating App for Android

Tinder is probably the biggest dating app currently in the smartphone market.  Even though it is optimized for Android OS, it is extremely highly intensive as it uses your GPS constantly to try to set you up with dates in your area.  The best way to get around this is by uninstalling the app altogether or if you must have the app, head over to your settings and ensure that Tinder is not running the background.

Great news; however, Tinder has released a desktop version for their users to use.  This is probably a call to users who have been complaining about the high battery drainage that they were experiencing.

HOW TO PREVENT ANY ANDROID APP FROM RUNNING IN THE BACKGROUND

We are now at the concluding but the most important part of this post. preventing battery-draining Android apps from running in the background. Like I said earlier, this can be done automatically by going through the phones’ settings. I tried and confirmed this on the galaxy s6, s7 and s8. It worked on Android OS 6 and 7. I am using a Samsung phone running Android 7.1 as my case study. Therefore my trick will work only on Samsung phones that come with the “Device maintenance menu”. On Samsung phones with the device maintenance app, go to settings>>Device maintenance>>battery>>scroll all the way down then select>>always sleeping apps>>then click in the 3 dotted lines at the top right corner>>Add apps>select the apps that you don’t want to run in the background. I have a picture of how you can do this.

HOW TO STOP RUNNING APPS ON ALL ANDROID PHONES

What I gave above is how to stop any android app from running in the background on later Samsung phones. This will not work for older android running os older than v5. However, a sure method is to enable developers options on your phone and stop running processes. To enable developers options on android 5 and newer on most Android, go to >>about software>>and tap on>>software information>>tap continuously on build number 5 times. Immediately this option is enabled, you can go to the developers’ option to kill the running app.

Alternatively, If you want it stopped permanently, go to app manager and disable, wipe cached or uninstall the problematic app. If the app is pre-installed, you can only disable as you cannot uninstall. You have the option to uninstall the pre-installed app only via root access. Although certain preloaded apps can be uninstalled on modern Android phones.