As many users of the Facebook app on iOS can attest, for some reason the app has been more battery draining than ever. This is due to the fact that the app continues running in the background despite the fact that many users out there choose to turn off background refresh for the app.
Now the good news is that Facebook has since issued an update and at the same time, took to Facebook to explain what exactly went wrong. According to Facebook’s Aris Grant, “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.”
Grants also goes on to confirm an earlier theory that background audio was also to blame for the battery drain. “The second issue is with how we manage audio sessions. If you leave the Facebook app after watching a video, the audio session sometimes stays open as if the app was playing audio silently. This is similar to when you close a music app and want to keep listening to the music while you do other things, except in this case it was unintentional and nothing kept playing.”
He reiterated that this had nothing to do with Location History or tracking. In any case an update to Facebook can be found in the iTunes App Store, so if you have yet to update it, head on over for the download. We can’t be 100% sure that the update has fixed the app, but we’ll keep our eyes on it and hopefully it has.