Pokemon Go is a Battery Killer, Not Data Drain, CNET Finds in Study

📅 July 14, 2016 - CNET staff members Rebecca Feenor and Sean Hollister ran a small, unofficial study on the effect Pokemon Go has on smartphone battery and data usage. The results were interesting to say the least.

Pokemon Go has already earned quite a reputation – some love it, some hate it, some are bitter about their incompatible phone software (!) – and it's even gaining attention from politicians that are concerned about the app's liberal privacy policy and use of user information.

Anyone who plays the game knows that it's a serious drain on your smartphone battery, and many are concerned about the amount of data it uses in the process. CNET staff members' unofficial study sought to find the answer to the following questions:

How much battery does Pokemon Go use in 30 minutes?
How much data does Pokemon Go use in 30 minutes?
What about in conjunction with other apps in the background?
The CNET study

Rebecca and Sean controlled for several wayward factors that could have affected the results of the Pokemon Go study. Those factors included:

Screen brightness
Cell signal strength
Background applications
Smartphone processors
Battery size

Screen brightness matters because the brighter the screen, the more battery used. For this reason, they turned off the auto-brightness setting and instead manually adjusted it to about 80%, the minimum needed to see the screen in bright outdoor lighting.

Cell signal strength was controlled for by study authors walking the same route around San Francisco, where they knew they would have full cell signal strength (i.e., wouldn't cause the battery to expend energy while searching for cell signal).

All background applications were turned off for the first part of the study.

Battery size and differences in smartphone processors were controlled for by using Rebecca's Apple iPhone 6S and no comparisons.

Here's the loop the study authors took around San Francisco (Tidbit: Note that it took them around Google's offices – John Hanke, the CEO of Pokemon Go creator Niantic and former owner of Keyhole, which was acquired by Google in 2004).

The authors took the same loop 4 times – once playing Pokemon Go only, once browsing Facebook only, once listening to Spotify only, and once using Pokemon Go and Spotify to look for any compound effects.

Each loop took 30 minutes and the phone was fully recharged between runs.

Results of the study

While the jury's still out on the privacy policy concerns about Pokemon Go, there were pretty clear results for this study on the battery and data usage of the application.

On the iPhone, Pokemon Go was a real battery killer, using 15% of the fully charged battery in just 30 minutes of play. Facebook used 5% of the battery in the same time period under the same conditions, and Spotify used 0% in offline playback mode. When Spotify and Go were used together, they burned through 17% of the fully charged battery in just 30 minutes. Ouch.

Pokemon Go = 15% battery usage for 30 minutes of play
Facebook = 5% battery for 30 minutes
Spotify = 0% for 30 minutes
Pokemon Go + Spotify = 17% battery use for 30 minutes

But every cloud has a silver lining – it turns out that Pokemon Go is not a data hog. It used less than 10 MB of data, less than streaming video, Gmail, etc.

Conclusions

If we take these results and apply them universally, you can expect an iPhone 6S to die in less than a full work day from playing Pokemon Go – not that you'd do that, of course – and that's if the app is the only thing running on your phone. Chances are, you're running lots of other apps at the same time.

The game has a built-in battery saver mode, which is worth trying out. Consider getting an external battery pack if you need additional battery power.