Facebook has released the following statement regarding Facebook’s iOS app’s battery drain:
We recently heard reports of some people experiencing battery issues with the Facebook iOS app and have been looking into the causes of these problems. We found a few key issues and have identified additional improvements, some of which are in the version of the app that was released today.
The first issue we found was a “CPU spin” in our network code. 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. This repeated processing causes our app to use more battery than intended. The version released today has some improvements that should start making this better.
The second issue is with how we manage audio sessions. If you leave the Facebook app after watching a video, the audio session sometimes stays open as if the app was playing audio silently. This is similar to when you close a music app and want to keep listening to the music while you do other things, except in this case it was unintentional and nothing kept playing. The app isn’t actually doing anything while awake in the background, but it does use more battery simply by being awake. Our fixes will solve this audio issue and remove background audio completely.
The issues we have found are not caused by the optional Location History feature in the Facebook app or anything related to location. If you haven’t opted into this feature by setting Location Access to Always and enabling Location History inside the app, then we aren’t accessing your device’s location in the background. The issues described above don’t change this at all.
We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused. We are committed to continuing to improve the battery usage of our app and you should see improvements in the version released today.
Source: Facebook
SEE ALSO:
Why you shouldn’t install the Facebook app on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch – August 20, 2015
FYI: Facebook collects all the text you typed but decided against posting – April 22, 2015
European Commission: Don’t use Facebook if you don’t want to be spied on – March 27, 2015
Facebook, Google, and Amazon are getting even creepier – December 9, 2014
Edward Snowden’s privacy tips: ‘Get rid of Dropbox,” avoid Facebook and Google – October 13, 2014
Tim Berners-Lee: You should own your personal data, not Google, Facebook, Amazon, and advertisers – October 8, 2014
How to hide Twitter, Facebook buttons in iOS 8 sharing panel – October 2, 2014
Facebook’s scary Messenger app highlights iOS security vs. Android security – August 8, 2014
Facebook conducts massive psychology experiment on 700,000 unaware users, and you may have been a guinea pig – June 28, 2014
Why Apple really values your privacy – unlike Google, Facebook, or Amazon – June 25, 2014
U.S. NSA used Facebook to hack into computers – March 12, 2014
How to permanently delete your Facebook account – December 16, 2013
Facebook is not the only hog out there.
God bless FaceBook for looking into this. Just like CBS, they CARE.
Are you serious? I sure hope not, because your post is humorous as sarcasm!
Batteries are not the only thing FaceBook drains…
So happy they fixed it. I can do 1000 more duck face selfies and have tons of battery to spare! 😀
I tossed it, not planning on bringing it back……
Experienced this directly. You have to kill the app to stymie the drain. Hopefully this will get better. But the Facebook app has been second rate for a long time.
About. Fscking. Time.
There’s no reason to install the silly privacy-invading, battery-draining Facebook app when you can simply use Safari to visit Facebook.com. And as a bonus, the web site doesn’t block messages and try to force you to use the Facebook Messaging app. 🙂