Tomas Chlebek Over the course of this week, several US developers and bloggers pointed to a long-standing issue with Facebook's iOS app, which consistently uses far more power than user activity would indicate. Matt Galligan mentioned that he has noticed many times over the past month that the official Facebook iOS app consumes the most power when it is in the background. This is even if the user has automatic background application updates turned off.
What exactly the app does in the background is unclear. However, the most talked about is that it uses VOIP services, audio and push notifications, which directly make content available without the user's knowledge. Galligan calls Facebook's approach "user-hostile." He says the company is actively creating ways to keep its app running in the background, with or without the user's permission.
Specific figures appearing in articles focusing on the issue show that the Facebook app accounted for 15% of the total energy consumed per week, with it running in the background twice as long as the user was actively working with it. At the same time, on the devices from which the data originates, automatic background app updates for Facebook have been disabled in the settings.
This information appears thanks to more detailed monitoring of battery consumption in iOS 9, which will show which application has what share of the total consumption and what is the ratio between active and passive (background) use of the application by the user.
While Facebook hasn't commented on what specifically its app does in the background, a company spokesperson responded to the negative articles by saying, “We've heard reports of people experiencing battery issues with our iOS app. We are looking into it and hope to be able to provide a fix soon…”
Until then, the best solution for problems with battery life is to either paradoxically allow Facebook to update in the background (which does not eliminate the problem of consuming excess energy, but at least reduces it), or to delete the application and access the social network through Safari. Third-party applications that allow access to Facebook are also considered.
Dropping the app isn't enough?
I think that should be enough.
It's enough, but it's exhausting to do 20 times a day. I simply deleted all the applications that, according to iOS, run in the background (despite the fact that I didn't allow them to do so) and suddenly I almost need to charge them once every two days - I recommend them.
I haven't gotten rid of this habit, I don't use the app, I just kill it :-( although sometimes it turns out that it's not such a bad practice, but I know it's a "bad habit" :-)
This is not only a problem with FB but also with their Messenger or WhatsApp.
it is then a question of how much apple tests applications before releasing them into circulation. I would expect that something like this is not allowed on the app store..
In my opinion, they don't test them, they just put them in some kind of sandbox where they have diagnostics (xcode allows something like this) and have a log output (I assume that the test metric will be similar to the one responsible for DieselGate), anyway, I assume that 80% automatic process without human intervention…
It's tested by live people. When you submit an app for approval, Apple wants login information for a test account so they can click through it.
Thanks for the correction, I really wouldn't have thought so, but I'm glad I learned.
Is it surprising to anyone that the reconciliation app Facebook reconciles?
That was my first uninstalled app.
How is it with Moves? With background refresh turned off, the app isn't even open and yet it's been running in the background for 7 hours in the last 34 days. I know that with such applications it is probably not possible any other way and that I have a health application on the 5S that measures my steps and running and the like, but I like the way Moves is made and then I don't want to give it up, so I have it at the expense of the battery
This time it's some kind of global problem for Apple. I've turned off background updates completely and yet I didn't kill the YouTube app yesterday and in the morning I'm watching and the battery is running low. In the battery report, I found that the app was running in the background for 16 hours.