Who doesn't love free apps, especially those that you discover are useful or entertaining on a daily basis? Something important to understand about free apps is that most of them are free because they include lots of advertising, which have a couple of hidden costs, especially if you have a limited data plan with a cellular carrier. Not only can all those ads eat up your data plan, but they can also increase the chances of you running out of battery power sooner. Studies have been done comparing apps that are available as both ad-supported or as a paid app and the findings were very surprising. Ad-supported apps can increase data usage to your plan by as much as 80% over the apps that you pay for to remove the ads. These apps can also take up valuable working memory on your smartphone and impact battery life by as much as 16%. For those struggling with keeping their phones charged through the day or those that are constantly bumping up against data limits, those free apps may be the culprit. Free apps can also overreach in the privacy area, which is another reason to be careful. Knowing this, paying a buck or two for an app to remove the ads may actually be a bargain if you use them all the time.