Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Android app automatic update bullishness

I've done something I haven't done in 8 years: I have enabled automatic app updates on my Android phone. Give me your most bloated, memory hogging apps and useless feature creep!

I still have disabled updates on these apps for varied reasons:

  • Chrome 71 - 72+ runs slowly with the new material design updates
  • Evernote 7 - newer versions are too bloated
  • Facebook v 93 - the king of memory hogs. It's the absolute worst offender. With older, slower phones, I removed the Facebook app and used the mobile web version and it simply was a lot more responsive. To keep the news feed responsive, it constantly is pulling down a huge amount of data and images. If you still need notifications, it supports browser notifications or you can install Facebook lite, which is the html5 version of the app; it really is a lot lighter on resources.
  • Acr voice call recorder 22 - the newer versions still record calls buthide the number called since Android has increased system security.
  • (Google) Play videos - I don't use it
Other than the apps above, most apps run pretty well on newer phones. Another thing that may have contributed to the snappy feel of the newer Android phones is the 8.0/Oreo OS.

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