Facebook drains iPhone batteries. That is why our staff just outright delete the app altogether on days they are on assignment, without access to a power strip and need all the battery power they have available.
It looks like the social media networking site is finally going to do something about it.
Last week, Facebook engineering manager Ari Grant said in a post that an updated version of Facebook’s iOS app would usher in”some improvements” to battery life.
Several tech sites have reported that Facebook apps were clocking up absurd amounts of “background activity” relative to how much screen time they actually spent with the app, with many theories floating around as to why.
Grant narrowed down the two possible causes in his post.
First, videos indeed continue to play background audio even though no sound was actually being transmitted. uh duh. No Sherlock. Of course that activity would keep the app active in the background and eat up the battery life.
“If you leave the Facebook app after watching a video, the audio session sometimes stays open as if the app was playing audio silently,” Grant wrote. “The app isn’t actually doing anything while awake in the background, but it does use more battery simply by being awake.”
Second, the”CPU spin” in the app’s network code works like a never-ending feedback loop meaning the app is never really sleeping.
“A CPU spin is like a child in a car asking, ‘Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?’ with the question not resulting in any progress to reaching the destination,” Grant explained, also refuting reports that the battery drain issues were caused by switching on location tracking options .
Ooooh! Like when a PC is out a memory and takes forever to perform any activity?! Been there!
“The version released today has some improvements that should start making this better.” he added. “We are committed to continuing to improve the battery usage of our app and you should see improvements in the version released today.”
h/t SMH tech blog
