What's killing your battery? Android's top 10 performance-sapping apps

It may seem to consume every spare moment of our lives, but the world's most famous social networking app is chewing up our mobiles too, with Facebook topping a global list of the most performance-draining Android apps, which considered battery drain, storage consumption and data use.

But it's not just Facebook draining our mobile power -- a raft of other social apps, games and even bloatware are consuming more processing power, battery life and data than many of us realise.

The findings come from new research conducted by AVG which took anonymous data from more than 1 million AVG Android app users in order to collate a list of the worst offenders in the Android app world (measured over Q3 2014, based on apps with more than 1 million Google Play downloads).

Culprits included pre-installed apps pushed out by device manufacturers, with 3 of the 10 biggest battery draining apps that run on start-up coming from Samsung. News apps also warrant a mention, particularly those that update in real-time, with the New York Times' Breaking News app topping the list of the most storage-hungry apps we use.

But with 62 percent of the time we spend on Android tablets or smartphones dedicated to playing games, gaming apps warranted their own top ten. In these stakes, King, the developer behind Candy Crush Saga and other titles in the Saga series, took out the dubious honour of holding 4 of the top 10 spots for performance-draining game apps.

So what should you do if your battery life is dropping faster than all those sugar balls in Candy Crush? AVG recommends turning off app notifications, limiting refresh intervals, deleting your cache of temporary files and limiting the amount of data an app is allowed to download while you're not watching.

Top 10 Performance-Draining Apps

1. Facebook
2. Path
3. 9GAG Funny Pics & Videos
4. Instagram
5. Spotify Music
6. BBM (BlackBerry)
7. QQ (Tencent Technology)
8. textPlus Free Text & Calls
9. Wattpad Free Books & Stories
10. iFunny : )

Top 10 Battery Drainers -- Run at Start Up

1. AllShareCast Dongle S/W Update (Samsung)
2. ChatON Voice & Video Chat (Samsung)
3. Beaming Service for Beep'n'Go (Moheam)
4. magicApp: Free Calls (magiclack VocalTec)
5. Samsung WatchON Tablets
6. Facebook
7. Path
8. PPS for Mobile
9. Vault-Hide SMS Pics & Videos
10. Al-Moazin Lite Prayer Times

Top 10 Storage Eaters

1. NY Times -- Breaking News
2. Tango Messenger Video & Calls
3. Spotify Music
4. Facebook
5. Chrome Browser
6. 9GAG Funny pics & videos
7. Instagram
8. LINE camera -- Selfie & Collage
9. Vine
10. Talking Angela

Top 10 Battery-Draining Game Apps

1. Puzzle & Dragons (GungHo Online Entertainment)
2. Hay Day (Supercell)
3. Candy Crush Saga (King)
4. Minecraft -- Pocket Edition (Mojang)
5. Cookie Jam (SGN)
6. Pet Rescue Saga (King)
7. Clash of Clans (Supercell)
8. Bubble Witch 2 Saga (King)
9. Farm Heroes Saga (King)
10. Angry Birds (Rovio Mobile)