Yesterday we reported that according to a former Apple Genius Bar technician, Scotty Loveless, it was found that quitting your apps by “killing” it via the multitask screen might actually lead to a bigger battery drain instead of the opposite. Now according to Loveless, it seems that there is another culprit that adds to the iPhone battery drain and it is none other than everyone’s favorite social networking app, Facebook.
Yup, you heard that right, if you’re the type of person who checks their Facebook all day, there is a good chance you will be draining your phone’s battery faster than you might think. That’s pretty obvious we guess since using any app constantly throughout the day can cause battery drain. However it turns out that Facebook’s features and ambitions are what’s draining your phone’s battery even faster.
During Loveless’ test on what might cause battery drain, he ran an app that would allow him to see the processes running on the iPhone and according to his findings, “During this testing, Facebook kept jumping up on the process list even though I wasn’t using it. So I tried disabling Location Services and Background App Refresh for Facebook, and you’ll never guess what happened: my battery percentage increased. It jumped from 12 percent to 17 percent. Crazy. I’ve never seen that happen before on an iPhone.”
Loveless later speculates that it is because of Facebook abusing VOIP call features and making them run in the background, and while that might provide a better end-user experience for Facebook users, it could lead to battery drain without iPhone users knowing why. In fact a recent document from Apple revealed that the number one change iPhone users wanted to make to the iPhone would be improved battery life.
Assuming that Loveless’ analysis is accurate, it could be rather ironic that iPhone users are asking Apple for better battery life when perhaps they should be asking Facebook to cut down on the background activity on their iPhones. Either way if you’re an avid Facebook user, it seems that disabling Location Services and Background App Refresh could go a long way towards better battery life on your iPhone.