Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Facebook app draining your iPhone battery? Company says it’s fixed it

By

facebook trending fake news blunders mobile
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Facebook says its latest iOS app update, rolled out Thursday, deals with a recent complaint from iPhone users that the software was hammering the device’s battery even when the app wasn’t in use.

The app’s overly enthusiastic background activity appeared to continue despite users turning off Background App Refresh in Settings, leading engineers at the company to finally address the situation and fix it.

Recommended Videos

In a post published on its site Thursday, Facebook engineer Ari Grant said that having done some digging, it seems there were two main issues putting undue pressure on users’ iPhone batteries.

Related

He called the first one a “CPU spin” in Facebook’s network code and offered this description: “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 engineer said the app update released Thursday “should start making this better.”

The second issue related to how the Facebook app managed audio sessions. Grant said if you leave the app after watching a video, “the audio session sometimes stays open as if the app was playing audio silently.” He compared it to when you close a music app but want to keep listening to the track while you do other things.

According to MacRumors, this particular “silent audio” action may have been enabled to ensure the app stayed active in the background so it could carry out tasks like pre-loading content. However, in his post, Grant insisted, “The app isn’t actually doing anything while awake in the background, but it does use more battery simply by being awake.”

The engineer finished up by saying users should see better battery performance with the latest version of the app, and at the same time promised his team would continue to look at ways of improving battery usage.

If you’ve noticed your iPhone power level falling away faster than expected, has Facebook’s app update made any difference? Sound off in the comments below.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
iPhone SE 4: news, rumored price, release date, and more
The Apple iPhone SE (2022) and Apple iPhone SE (2020) together.

While the spotlight always seems to be on Apple’s mainline iPhones, the iPhone SE is a great pick for those who are on a budget. If you want an iPhone that doesn't break the bank, the SE is the way to go.

The original iPhone SE came out in 2016, and then Apple revamped it in 2020 and 2022 by giving it some more modern hardware. The iPhone SE tends to get updated every two or so years rather than annually like the traditional iPhone. This means  that we should see a new iPhone SE 4 this year, but it’s not so cut-and-dried with this particular model.

Read more
3 reasons why I’ll actually use Anker’s new iPhone power bank
A person holding the Anker MagGo Power Bank.

Power banks are a necessary evil, and even if you don’t consider yourself a “power user” who's likely to drain a phone’s battery in less than a day, there will be times when one comes in handy. And when I am forced to carry one, I want it to be as helpful and versatile as possible.

I’ve been trying Anker’s MagGo Power Bank 10K -- meaning it has a 10,000mAh cell inside it -- and there are three reasons why I'm OK with it taking up valuable space in my bag.
It has a screen on it

Read more
Here’s how Apple could change your iPhone forever
An iPhone 15 Pro Max laying on its back, showing its home screen.

Over the past few months, Apple has released a steady stream of research papers detailing its work with generative AI. So far, Apple has been tight-lipped about what exactly is cooking in its research labs, while rumors circulate that Apple is in talks with Google to license its Gemini AI for iPhones.

But there have been a couple of teasers of what we can expect. In February, an Apple research paper detailed an open-source model called MLLM-Guided Image Editing (MGIE) that is capable of media editing using natural language instructions from users. Now, another research paper on Ferret UI has sent the AI community into a frenzy.

Read more