Energy, WiFi and RAM use by Android messaging apps

by andrey_utkinon 10/20/2023, 9:41 PMwith 35 comments

by edsimpsonon 10/20/2023, 11:53 PM

This really interesting, would love to see how Signal stacks up.

by g-b-ron 10/20/2023, 11:32 PM

Not surprised in the least about Element unfortunately, it really screamed for a rewrite (one of the biggest problems was the horrible choice of database, which unfortunately was very hard to replace)

by andrey_utkinon 10/20/2023, 9:41 PM

Hi! I would like to show you my small analysis of Android messaging apps: power draw, bandwidth and RAM use.

by siddheshgunjalon 10/21/2023, 1:48 AM

It's a good thing that I have disabled Gmail app on my device and use k9 for all my email accounts. Seems like I should stop using WhatsApp too.

by mikelwardon 10/21/2023, 6:13 AM

According to Battery Historian [1], WhatsApp was the single biggest cause of battery drain on my phone.

1. https://developer.android.com/topic/performance/power/batter...

by ommzon 10/21/2023, 4:34 AM

Tangent, I find Instagram to be one of the most egregious battery drainers amongst mainstream apps. A former IG employee made a claim here on HN that the inefficiency was due to ghastly experiments being run on clients devices. Shame, I cannot seem to find that comment.

by WithinReasonon 10/21/2023, 7:13 AM

Seems like measuring the median would be misleading

by MBCookon 10/21/2023, 12:10 AM

Can someone summarize the findings? I genuinely can’t read it well. The tables are too wide for the viewport. If I make the browser wider the page becomes two columns and the viewports are still too small to show the full table.

The sections of text also appear to be longer than the boxes they are in, causing scrolling inside which I only discovered after a few minutes and making it hard to read.

Honestly it’s quite frustrating. Which is too bad I really liked that this testing was done.