Does bloatware drain your battery? – Gary explains
Does bloatware drain your battery? – Gary explains
2016-06-25
why it is so much blue where on my phone
hello my name is Gary Sims from Andrew
authority now there aren't that made
derogatory terms that you find in the
Android ecosystem but one of them for
sure
is bloatware and the big question that
really is important for all of us is
does bloatware drain the battery on our
phones well let me explain so when you
buy an Android smartphone you can have
five different types of pre-installed
app on your phone now the third type of
pre-installed app is the ones that come
with Android for example the clock and
the calculator then the second type are
the apps that come from Google so maybe
you'll have Google Play and Gmail and
YouTube and so on
now really here we're not into the
realms of bloatware if you just have the
standard apps clock calculator and then
Google Play and YouTube and Gmail we're
not yet into the area of bloatware
if you buy a phone for a big OAM they
may have added some of their own apps to
that phone so for example if you have a
Samsung you might have Samsung S health
you might have s voice you might have
Galaxy Apps and so on then the fourth
type of pre-installed app are the ones
that come from their partners so if your
OBM assigned a partner with someone like
Amazon or Microsoft then you might
suddenly find you've got the Kindle
reader on there you've got Skype on
there maybe you've got Microsoft Word on
there and these now are could have
partner apps third-party apps that have
come pre-installed on your phone then
the fifth type of pre-installed apps are
the ones that can come from your carrier
so if you with one of the big US
carriers it's pretty normal for them to
want to add extra apps on top so that's
five different types of apps that can be
on your phone now generally as I said if
it's just the clock and the calendar and
Gmail and Google Play then we're not yet
into the area of bloatware but the high
got this list of five different types
the closer and closer we get to
bloatware now of course what you
consider bloatware and what I consider
bloatware might be two different things
for actually I quite like Skype
installed on my phone
she quite like Kindle reader Easter on
my phone if they didn't come with it I
would actually install those on there
pretty quickly but sometimes there were
some other partner apps or carrier apps
that come on that really I'm not so
happy about and then I might take to
them all these a bloatware i I don't
like these of course also the quality of
those apps is very important if there
are apps that have been put on for added
value but in fact all they do are caused
you pain and they crash and they freeze
and they're unexpected behavior and they
nagging you and all that kind of stuff
they knew it again consider those to be
bloatware now what i have here is a
galaxy s7 branded by verizon so it's the
verizon version of the galaxy s7 and it
comes with all five types of
pre-installed app because we've got the
standard android apps we've got the Play
Store and we've got Gmail and so on and
we've got some Samsung Apps on top
because it is a Samsung s7 then we've
got some partner apps for example Amazon
music is on there Amazon Kindle reader
is on there and then on top of that
Verizon have added their own apps as
well so really I wanted to answer this
question all these apps have been added
on top are they draining my battery so
what I did was I got all these apps I
open them all up made sure they were all
working made sure if there's any extra
stuff to be installed or anything to be
registered that should be registered I
got them all up and running and then
basically left the phone for a while
then used it a bit more and try to
repeat a kind of day or two days of
usage of the phone to see whether the
battery was drained by these additional
apps now the good thing about galaxy s7
is it has some pretty detailed battery
usage statistics so if you go into the
application manager it will tell you
about each individual app and how much
battery life it has been using so having
been using the phone for over a day and
letting it work and seeing what's going
on in the background I went into the
application manager and went through all
these different apps to see if any of
them were using the battery now I count
on the Verizon version of galaxy
s-seven about 18 maybe 20 extra apps
that you would consider to be bloatware
additional apps that are above and
beyond Google services and the standard
apps and I went through that list in the
application manager to see which ones
were using any of the battery life now
the good news is that when I went
through the list all the apps everything
from my verizon to the Kindle reader to
the Verizon cloud app all these things
produced a zero percentage usage in the
battery manager program so they reported
that they were not using any battery
life now what does that actually mean
well the galaxy s7 has a 3000 milliamp
hour battery and if it's a percentage
therefore we can divide it by a hundred
which means it to be one percent it
means it's got to use 30 milliamp hours
so we know that each of these apps were
not using at least 30 milliamp hours and
in fact that's what you would expect
because the Amazon Kindle reader for
example if you're not actually using it
then it isn't going to be reporting any
battery usage actually when I analyze
those about 1820 apps is probably only
four or five that really have background
services that could be doing something
to flatten your battery so if you reduce
those down again there's really only
five or six that could be draining the
battery and again those five or six only
reported a 0% battery use is so less
than 30 milli amp hours now if you want
to see a full analysis of all these
different numbers I've got them over on
the Android EECOM website there is a
written article that goes along with
this video so what does that mean that
means on the verizon s7 the bloatware
apps do not drain the battery now let's
just take one step back and answer the
following question can bloatware flatten
the battery yes
does bloatware flatten your battery
probably not but of course there are
exceptions and why I say that is because
of this is that basically any software
can be badly written you can have a
terrible piece of software and they can
also be very bad decisions that are made
so somewhere in a meeting someone has
decided that
killer app should be pre-installed on a
particular phone and that's a bad
decision because it's a bad app and then
that phone will get a bad reputation
because it's battery will flatten
quickly so at any point any app can
actually flatten your back if you
download one from the Play Store it can
be a big battery hog so it's not
necessarily bloatware that is the issue
is bad apps or the issue and if bad app
get pre-installed on your phone then you
are in trouble now the good news is that
most bloatware apps can actually be
disabled they can't be uninstalled but
they can be disabled and on the s7 for
example if you go to the app drawer you
find an app that you want to have
disabled if you long press on it and
then drag it they'll be an icon up at
the top of the screen either that says
turn off or disabled if you drag it
there that app will be disabled and it
will no longer start up when you start
your phone so then as a summary any bad
app can drain your phone and if it's a
bad app that's a battery hog and it
comes pre-installed then you are in
trouble however most of the big o AMS
will make sure their apps are of high
quality
so can bloatware drain your battery yes
it can does bloatware drain your battery
well no but of course there are
exceptions and about those exceptions
I'm sure you're going to write in the
comments below and tell me all about
some bad apps you've had experience with
please do that let's here let's call out
some of these manufacturers and see
which apps are actually draining the
battery let's see which OMS are putting
bad apps pre-installed on their phone
well my name's Gary assume from Andhra
thority I hope you enjoyed this video
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