iPhone users were facing battery drain issues due to Facebook’s iOS app. Ari Grant, Engineer Manager at Facebook has admitted to the issue and released an update to fix it.
Grant cited two reasons that caused the unusual battery drain for the Facebook app iPhones. He said code in the app caused “CPU spin” that required too much of the phone’s processor power while the second was related to audio.
“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.”
said Ari Grant in the post.
The second reason for the battery drain was that the Facebook app kept playing silent audio even when running in the background. The app is not actually doing anything while awake in the background, but it does use more battery simply by being awake. He said that the update will solve the audio issue and remove background audio completely. Grant further clarified that the Location History feature in the Facebook app or anything related to location are not the cause of the battery drain. If you haven’t enabled the “Location History” setting in the app, Facebook will not track you in the background.
App Link – Facebook