We love free apps, right? Hey yeah, why are you depriving yourself of that? Why pay when you can enjoy something without spending a dime? It’s no secret that Android smartphone users especially love free apps and shy away from paid ones. But according to one study, free apps can sometimes cost you more.
- Also read: The best Android apps of 2015
When we talk about free apps, we think of apps that are truly free, meaning they don’t even have in-app purchases. This may surprise you, but most of the Play Store’s profits come from free apps, not paid apps.
Some of you probably don’t suspect it, but free apps have many hidden costs. Yes, it looks like you’re the product when it’s free.
In any case, what is this Study conducted by three universities : University of Southern California, Rochester Institute of Technology and Queen’s University. This research, conducted on a Galaxy S2 between January and August 2014, compared the mechanisms of 21 free apps appearing in top apps on the Play Store.
Obviously, one of the primary sources of revenue for developers and Google in free apps is advertising. You pay nothing on your own, you just have to endure scrolling banners or panels that relentlessly take up your entire screen between two Duel Quiz games.
According to the research conducted by researchers from three universities, the amount of data requested by free applications can sometimes be 100% more than the amount of data requested by paid applications. on average a free app consumes 79% more data compared to a paid app.
“It’s all well and good, but I don’t understand what saved me in terms of money!”. From a purely financial standpoint, the average data consumption when using free apps is 1.7 cents each time (according to figures from major US carriers). in euros this represents 1.5 euro cents or 0.015 euro.
This may sound very low, but multiply that number by the number of times you use apps. Use them 10 times and it will already cost you 0.15 Euros. You pay 100 times and 1.50 euro. And when we see how addicted users are, we reach 100 times quite easily.
- On the same subject: How to reduce your data consumption on Android?
System idling and autonomy at half mast
Users today want to be able to do everything quickly, at the same time, with a device with unmatched fluidity. They are multitaskers just like on their smartphones. So this means using several apps at once and especially free apps as most of us have more of them on our smartphones.
According to research, free, ad-supported apps consume up to 56% more computing power. While 48% of this additional computing power comes from the higher computational load on the processor, Coming from 22% RAM usage. Suffice it to say that besides being painful to use, it also causes other discomforts.
The first is clearly related to the autonomy of the smartphone. A device that is constantly asked to deliver more power will necessarily consume more battery. According to research, free apps consume up to 33% more battery.
Battery life is less important and not only suitable for daily use, but you will need to replace the battery sooner than expected. Of course you can, because the trend is for non-removable batteries and in this case you will have to replace the device. A very high cost to want to scrape a few euros, right?
- For more : How do you double the battery life of your smartphone?
Developers pay the price too
If there are hidden costs for free app users, there are also for developers. By choosing a free model, developers are paid less if payment had been made for the application.
Moreover, its revenues are unstable and also depend on ad networks and competitors. Finally, they are not immune to seeing their app’s image being scratched for some reason. adware security issue this actually affects the ads, not the app itself.
Obviously, it is not for us to carry out a moralistic discourse. The system is as follows: There are free apps and paid apps. However, we would like to point out that the applications are not completely free and from now on, you can make your application choices knowingly.
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