We've all been there - that moment when your smartphone's battery life enters the red danger zone and you realise you've still got another five hours of work/travelling/trying to locate your friends before you're going anywhere near a charger. So you do what any sane person would do and manically start closing down all your apps, stop listening to any music or watching any videos and turning down the screen brightness. Because a smartphone you can't actually do anything with is still better than no phone at all, right?
But there is another way, guys. Recently Blogger Russell Holly hypothesised that deleting the Android Facebook app is the best way to save your battery life. He suspected there was all sorts of hidden background activity going on even when you're not using the app, and this is what's been draining our batteries.
Once he put this out there, Reddit user pbrandes_eth tested the apps performance and how it can save your smartphones battery life. He discovered that you delete the Facebook app and only visit the site in Safari, your phone is going to be a lot faster (yay!). the Guardian's tech reporter Samuel Gibbs tried a similar test on his iPhone and on his Android phone and discovered that deleting the Facebook app saved up to 15% of this iphone's battery life and 20% of this android phone's battery. So basically the difference between you being able to listen to Spotify on that loooong train journey and not. You're welcome.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.