Ladies like Facebook for Android, while the gents prefer Google Maps

A new study by Nielsen on the usage patterns of Android users has revealed some insights as to how men and women use their smartphones differently throughout the day. Most notable is the finding that women use Facebook on their phone more than anything else, while men are apparently looking up directions all the time in Google Maps.

Overall, the top three used Android apps in Nielsen's study were Facebook, Google Maps, and Gmail. However, women were more likely to use Facebook than men, as 81 percent of female users had used it in the 30 days that Nielsen's study was conducted. Comparatively, only 66.9 percent of men used the Facebook app in the same time period. Men had no trouble using Google Maps though, as 77.1 percent used it, while 71.9 percent of women made use of Google's native navigation software.

Both YouTube and Angry Birds had strong showings for both sexes, and Advanced Task Killer is still convincing more than 1 out of 4 users to drink its snake oil. Surprisingly enough, almost 18 percent of users use the Amazon Appstore, which shows that both men and women like a free app once in a while.

Nielsen's study was conducted with volunteer users who installed meters on their devices that monitored their application usage. Nielsen determined an app's "active reach" by looking the percentage of Android users who used the app within a 30 day period.