Date: Sep 02, 2014 Author: Karissa Bell Source: Mashable.com (
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It's not always easy to tell which apps are affecting your battery life the most.
A new Android app from Purdue University researchers, Estar, aims to fix this problem by identifying your most power-hungry apps, and providing more energy-efficient alternatives.
See also: Save Battery Life With These 7 Lite Versions of Your Favorite Apps
Upon launching, Estar provides two options: "install energy efficient apps" or "stop power hungry apps." Selecting the first directs you to recommendations of popular social, news, communication and gaming apps that Estar has identified as being efficient; the app assigns a rating to each app in the Play Store.
But it's the latter option that really showcases the best of what Estar offers. Choosing "stop power-hungry apps" displays how much of your battery's resources the apps you've already installed are using. It also identifies the worst offenders (spoiler: Facebook Messenger is likely among them), and estimates how many minutes of battery life you'll save by killing each power-sucking app. While it may not seem like much, a few minutes here and there could easily add up to an essential hour or two of battery life.
Estar App
The Estar app will tell you which apps use the most battery, and provide less power-hungry alternatives.
Image: Mobile Enerlytics
The free app was created by Mobile Enerlytics, a four-person startup in Purdue's Research Park incubator.
"An effective way to extend a smartphone's battery life is to provide users with information about applications' energy efficiency," company CEO and cofounder Y. Charlie Hu said in a statement. "There are millions of apps in today's market, and there are several alternatives to almost every popular app."
For now, the app is Android only, but an iOS version is apparently in the works.
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Topics: Android, Android apps, apps-and-software, Apps and Software, battery life, Tech
