Not in terms of the cost of whatever their IAP is, but in battery life, processing power, and above all, data use.
App stores, whether you’re on the iOS, Android or Windows Phone side of the fence are a fact of life and one that many people welcome, based on the complaints that fly forth if a developer dares to even charge a dollar for an application.
Producing and supporting those apps takes effort and money, however, which is how so many of those apps rely on either in-app purchases or embedded advertising, and often both. It’s the price you pay for a “FREE” app, because developers, like most people, enjoy eating every once in a while.
The cost of IAP is rather plainly spelled out within each app, with some doing better than others in terms of balancing rapacious greed against the need to eat every once in a while, but there are other “costs” involved in free apps that rely on advertising to pay the bills.
A US study set out to quantify the real world costs of “free” apps, and the results, while subject to the usual pinch of salt you need for any study, make for fascinating reading.
If you’re always finding your iPhone or Android running out of power, check your free phone usage. The study concluded that, on average, the power draw of grabbing all that advertising material adds up to an average of 16 per cent more battery usage. Over a 24 hour period, that would be more than three hours of battery life sapped away.
It’s no better in memory terms either, with the analysis pointing to a 22 per cent hike in memory usage and 56 per cent more CPU utilisation, which could explain your phone’s propensity towards sluggish behaviour if you’re a heavy Candy Crush player.
The real kicker, however, is in the data churned through in order to dazzle your eyeballs with whatever it is Kate Upton’s hiked her skirt to these days*, with the study concluding that the data usage for supposedly “free” apps jumps an alarming 79 per cent over paid apps.
Source: USC News via Lifehacker
*Yes, I’m rather specifically sick of the Game Of War ads everywhere. I can’t be the only one, can I?