AVG helps Android out with a free app monitor

If you think apps are pulling your smartphone’s battery life down, you could be onto something. Security company AVG has been looking into the idea a little more, and has come up with a free solution to aid in this area.

Anyone with a smartphone has downloaded an app or two in their life. Whether it’s for social networking, playing games, listening to music, or just checking out news, grabbing apps have become a norm for us all.

But what happens to the apps you don’t use?

“With recent studies showing that as much as 82% of consumers’ mobile time is being spent on apps, it’s clear that we all love to download these programs, but there are inevitably some apps that we use once then totally forget about,” said Yuval Ben-Itzhak, Chief Technology Officer for AVG.

“While this doesn’t seem like an immediate problem, having these unused apps running in the background can have a draining effect on our devices, particularly on their limited storage memory, but also on battery power and mobile data – all of which can ultimately hinder overall performance.”

As strange as it is, some apps can stay running, consuming battery life or taking up memory even when you don’t need them.

To help fix this, security group AVG has released “Free Uninstaller,” an app that will analyse applications sitting on an Android smartphone either by battery, data, or storage usage, and tell you which consumes the most in each of these categories.

From there, you merely select which apps to install, press the “uninstall” button, and then go through to motions as you remove the apps you no longer need.

Alternatively, the app will watch your app usage over the course of a few days and see what you’re using, giving you suggestions of what to uninstall over time.

The application is available free on all Android devices, though it does come with the odd advertisement at the bottom of the screen for AVG’s other products.