Has your smart phone been dying a quick death every hour or so? If so, you’ve got Facebook to blame.
Facebook has finally admitted their updated app is draining our battery power faster than usual.
It seems, the new battery menu in iOS 9 is using more than its fair share, and now – through a published statement – Facebook is acknowledging the problem.
“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 an announcement.
The first issue we found was a “CPU spin” in our network code. 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.
A second issue being blamed for some battery drain is tied to the way Facebook handles audio playback.
“If you leave the Facebook app after watching a video, the audio session sometimes stays open as if the app was playing audio silently,” Grant said.
It’s like when you close a music app, but want to keep listening to the music while you do other things. Only, Facebook is keeping the app open unintentionally and nothing is playing. Facebook’s app isn’t actually doing anything beyond draining your battery.
Grant insists Facebook is addressing the issue:
“We are committed to continuing to improve the battery usage of our app and you should see improvements in the version released today.”
I imagine this means we will all have another upgrade to install once these changes are made. We shall see…
I always knew it! What a pain. Facebook has a habit of these insidious little things.