The Perception of Bloatware: Does it Drain Your Phone's Battery?

Hello, my name is Gary Sims from Andrew Authority Now. I'd like to start by saying that there are certain derogatory terms associated with Android devices, one of which is bloatware. Today, we're going to explore whether bloatware can drain your phone's battery.

When you buy an Android smartphone, you'll typically find five different types of pre-installed apps on your device. The first type includes standard apps that come with Android itself, such as the clock and calculator. These are not considered bloatware because they are essential for basic functionality.

The second type of app is those developed by Google, including the Play Store and Gmail. Again, these are not considered bloatware as they serve important purposes like entertainment and communication.

Now we're getting into the realm of bloatware if you have a phone that comes with apps from its manufacturer or carrier. For example, if you purchase a Samsung device, it may come pre-installed with certain apps, such as Samsung Pay or Galaxy Music. These are often considered bloatware because they may be unnecessary for most users.

The Perception of Bloatware: Does it Drain Your Phone's Battery?

The perception of bloatware is that it can slow down your phone and drain its battery life. However, in the case of pre-installed apps from manufacturers or carriers, the evidence suggests otherwise.

In this video, I'll be analyzing whether these pre-installed apps are actually draining the battery life of Android devices. Let's take a look at how these apps fare under scrutiny.

I recently analyzed several pre-installed apps from different manufacturers and found that most of them reported zero battery usage in the battery manager program. This may seem counterintuitive, but it highlights that not all bloatware is created equal.

For example, I looked at the Amazon Kindle reader app on an Android device. You'd think that this app would be draining the battery, given its name and functionality. However, the analysis revealed that it was reporting zero battery usage. This is because the app itself doesn't actually use any power unless you're actively using it.

In contrast, some background services of certain apps may still be consuming resources, even if they don't report any battery usage. For instance, I found that only a handful of pre-installed apps on Android devices were actually draining the battery. These included the Verizon Cloud app and a few others. The rest reported zero battery usage.

The analysis also revealed that these apps were not consuming significant amounts of power. In fact, they were using less than 30 milliamperes at all times. This is comparable to the amount of power used by many other system processes on Android devices.

So what does this mean? It means that most pre-installed bloatware apps are not actually draining your phone's battery life. However, there can be exceptions.

Badly written software or poorly thought-out decisions made during development can still result in battery drain. This is because any app can be a battery hog if it's not designed properly. Additionally, apps that consume excessive resources in the background may still cause issues with battery life.

On the other hand, many manufacturers are taking steps to ensure their pre-installed apps are of high quality and don't impact battery life. For example, Samsung has implemented various features to help users manage their app usage and conserve battery power.

As for our audience, I encourage you to share your own experiences with bloatware and battery drain in the comments section below. Let's explore this topic further together and see which manufacturers are putting out bad apps on their phones.

In conclusion, while there may be exceptions, it appears that most pre-installed bloatware apps on Android devices are not actually draining the battery life. However, it's essential to remember that any poorly designed app can still cause issues with battery performance.

To sum up our findings:

* Most pre-installed bloatware apps reported zero battery usage in the battery manager program.

* Only a handful of apps were found to be consuming significant amounts of power.

* These apps included background services, which may not necessarily impact battery life unless used excessively.

* Manufacturers like Samsung are taking steps to ensure their pre-installed apps don't negatively affect battery performance.

Thanks for watching this video on the perception of bloatware and its impact on Android devices. Don't forget to download the Android Authority app to access our content directly on your mobile phone.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhy 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 please do give it a thumbs up if you did don't forget to download the Android or thority app so you get access to all of our stuff directly on your mobile phone and don't forget to visit Andrew authorities calm because we are your source for all things Android Oh\n"