Facebook has admitted that its iOS app may be draining users’ battery life more quickly than expected, with the app seemingly using power even when it’s not running.
Reports of excessive battery life usage by the Facebook app have been rife for the last week or so, with many users discovering that the app was being reported as having been running for hours upon hours in the background, supposedly multitasking away to itself. The usual fix of disabling background app refresh doesn’t solve the problem, something that is particularly worrying for those who like to keep a close eye on what the apps on their iPhones are up to.
Speaking to TechCrunch, a Facebook spokesperson has admitted that the app is having some problems, but promised that a fix is in the works that should see battery usage return to a more acceptable level.
We have heard reports of some people experiencing battery issues with our iOS app. We’re looking into this and hope to have a fix in place soon,” the spokesperson said.
In our testing, we have found the Facebook app to be capable of using over eight hours of battery supposedly running in the background, though what it’s doing is anyone’s guess. Some have speculated that the issue is related to auto-playing videos within the app, with those videos playing even when the app is closed. What’s interesting here is that iOS is supposed to kill apps that have been running for a while, or at least have them suspended ready to be awoken at a later time. Something Facebook is doing is stopping that, and media playing is one possible reason for the system not suspending an app as it normally would.
Whatever the reason, Facebook says that it’s working to fix the problem. Given Facebook’s weekly app update schedule, hopefully, we won’t need to wait too long before that fix is out.
(Source: TechCrunch)
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