Have you ever wondered why your iPhone battery life is bad? There’s a good chance the Facebook App is responsible for some of your iPhone battery life issues, but that has to change.
A new Facebook app update for iPhone includes two specific fixes aimed at providing users with better iPhone battery life by optimizing CPU usage and solving an annoying bug where the Facebook iPhone app kept playing silent sound in the background after closing it.
Earlier this month, we shared our concerns about Facebook causing poor iPhone battery life after reports indicated the Facebook app was staying awake when it shouldn’t have. This isn’t the first time the Facebook iPhone app has emerged as a potential battery hog. In 2013, users discovered that the Facebook app remained active in the background and was draining the battery faster.
A new Facebook app update promises to fix bad iPhone battery life.
A week after users brought attention to Facebook’s iPhone battery life issues, the company responded with fixes and a description of what’s going on in the latest Facebook app update for iPhone.
Users who already have Facebook installed can:
If you have automatic updates turned on, you probably have the Facebook app update on your iPhone and you should start seeing better battery life.
The Facebook update notes don’t specifically mention these fixes, but Ari Grant, Engineering Manager at Facebook, outlines these changes in a public post. Grant writes
“The first problem we found was a “CPU spin” in our network code. A CPU spin was like a kid in a car, “Are we here yet? Haven’t we arrived yet? Are we there yet?” question did not result in any progress towards reaching the goal. This repeated action causes our app to use more battery than intended. The version released today has some improvements that should start to make this better.
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The second issue is about 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 is silently playing audio. This is like when you close a music app and want to continue listening to music while you do other things, except in this case it’s unintentional and nothing continues to play. The app actually does nothing while awake in the background, but by staying awake it consumes more battery. Our fixes will fix this audio issue and completely remove background audio.”
Grant concludes the update by apologizing for the issue and stating that Facebook is “committed to continuing to improve our app’s battery usage.”
There’s a new Facebook app update for iPhone every two weeks, so users may see additional improvements in early November.
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