No battery life, a huge phone bill and a shortage of storage are irritating at the best of times. Regardless of whether you have the latest and greatest smartphone and a large data allowance, the dreaded drain can easily still happen.

There are a few sure fire ways to keep your phone running for longer and conserve data. The easiest way to do this is something we often don’t consider – culling apps.

• Should you buy the Samsung Galaxy S6?
• Are you making your cup of tea incorrectly?

How many do you currently have on your phone? Are they all necessary and frequently used? Deleting seldom-used apps can immediately boost speed and battery power, drastically improving the user experience your phone provides.

Another easy way to combat phone drain is to stop apps running in your phone background. Any app you use remains running until it has been quit. If you get in the habit of quitting infrequently used apps after use, you’ll find your phone runs considerably faster.

Your favourite apps could be secretly draining your phone’s battery power. Photo: Shutterstock

On an iPhone you can do this by double tapping the home screen and swiping up on the app you wish to close. If you have Android, launch the recent applications menu, find the application you want by scrolling up, tap and hold the application and swipe it to the right.

While you may want your Instagram, Facebook and Twitter always running, consider whether you always need applications like maps, weather, snapchat or your online banking constantly running in the background.

No two apps were created equally and it seems some are far worse at sapping your phone. So who are the worst culprits?

According to antivirus software manufacturer AVG, Facebook is the number one drain when it comes to phone storage, data and battery life. Given how much it requires of your phone, it may be worth considering whether you are happy to only access the social media platform from your desktop.

Other apps that fared poorly across the three categories included well known favourites like Spotify, Instagram, Candy Crush, NY Times and Angry Birds.

Failsafe tips for saving battery

Your relationship with your phone doesn’t have to be like this. There are simple solutions to your batter woes.

• Say no to push notifications: When downloading an app you have the option to receive push notifications. Allowing this enables the app to use data even when you are not actively engaged, sending you push notifications, or using your location data. Opt out and save uncontrolled data use.

• Disable video auto-play on Facebook: Video are a notorious burner of data and battery. With Facebook increasingly becoming a platform for video sharing, this is a great setting to have in place. For iPhone go to Settings, select ‘Auto-play on WiFi only’. For Android, go to App Settings, select ‘General Settings’ and then ‘Video Auto-play’.

• Cull, cull cull! The best way for your phone to run more efficiently is to delete the apps you no longer use. Be ruthless.

• Double check your settings after an update: Sometimes a software update can adjust your default settings to more of a data drain, so ensure everything is as it was.

• Take a break from your emails: Whether it’s the weekend, a holiday or a much needed sanity break, sometimes we don’t need to check our emails constantly. You can change how often your inbox refreshes for email, giving you time to focus on more enjoyable things, and saving you data and battery while you’re at it. For iPhones, go to settings, select ‘Mail’, ‘Contacts’, ‘Calendars’, ‘Fetch new data’. For Android go to settings, select ‘Email’, ‘Account settings’, ‘Email check’, ‘Frequency’.

• Say ‘no’ to email attachments on mobile: Change your mailbox settings to stop downloading attachments on your smartphone. It takes a huge amount of data and can always wait till you’re on desktop.