Facebook Admits Its iOS App Is A Battery Killer

Facebook has revealed it is looking to improve the performance of its iOS app after receiving a large number of user complaints that it is draining a significant amount of battery life.

The problem has been uncovered thanks to the new battery menu in iOS 9, which lists app-by-app battery usage, and has revealed that Facebook’s app is a major drain on a range of mobile devices.

Facebook has now pledged to immediately improve performance, which it says resulted from several issues with the app regarding coding and audio playback.

Check out some of the top iOS 9 features for businesses here.

Issues

“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,” Facebook’s Ari Grant wrote in a post on the site.

“We are committed to continuing to improve the battery usage of our app and you should see improvements in the version released today.”

Grant outlined that the power issues appeared to be down to two main factors, the first part of which was what he called a “CPU spin” in Facebook’s network code.

Likening the issue to 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, the repeated processing of a CPU spin causes the app to use more battery than intended.

The second part of the issue was to do with how the app manages audio sessions, as Grant explained that leaving the Facebook app open after watching a video sometimes causes the audio session to stay open as if it was playing audio silently.

This means that, although nothing is playing (or ever does play), the app stays awake and functional, meaning it continues to use up power without necessarily doing anything.

Facebook says that the fixes to the issue will remove background audio completely, and also lead to better app performance.

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