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Facebook Aware of iOS App Battery Life Drain Issue and Working on a Fix

C DM said:
I'm not even sure what that aspect of the discussion even matters. It's like discussing if you should call or text people--there isn't something right or wrong or good or bad about any of those things, just what works individually for different people at different times. Facebook or social network or anything similar to that is like that, and trying to prove it's this or that to others is rather moot since it is what it is for different people and what others think about it doesn't matter.
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I think you misunderstand my intent - I'm not trying to prove that Facebook is anything in particular, simply saying, before deleting oneself from Facebook, if confronted by a barrage of posts you don't care about, try unfriending or muting the people who annoy you the most _on Facebook_ - specifically _because_ different forms of communication work better or worse for different people. There are plenty of people I know in real life, or online, who I would not friend on Facebook, because I don't care to interact with them in that forum, or I know their politics will piss me off, or I don't want to see their constant posts about golf, for instance. I'm saying, make Facebook be what you want it to be, rather than friending everyone you know IRL in some attempt to make it a virtual map of everyone you know. You can still interact with people in dozens of other ways. (FWIW, I know a bunch of people who are extremely vocal on Twitter - I only follow a couple of them, because I don't want Twitter to be a chore for me to read.) Make sense?
 
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BJMRamage said:
how do you get the details of the app battery usage...underneath where it says "X" screen time and "XX" background time
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When looking at the battery usage table, to the right of the "Last 24 hours" and "Last N days" buttons, there's a little clock symbol - tapping it toggles the details about hours/minutes of usage on and off.
 
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I deleted my app last week after the battery stats showed that it had used up over 70% of my battery in the background! I noticed it because after upgrading to iOS 9 on my iPhone 6, I noticed that every now and then my phone would get really really hot without me having to do anything. Since deleting it, my iPhone has been fine. Not gonna be in a rush to re-download it
 
Since Facebook made me get the messenger as a separate app I've removed both off my phone. They can stay on my iPad but nobody sends important messages through FB to me anyway *shrugs*
 
WRONG! I've got auto-play video disabled. I've got location services set to "never". And I've got background app refresh turned off. I just checked and Facebook had consumed 53% of battery, 8 hours background. Apparently nothing I do will stop the drain, so I just deleted the app.
 
I deleted the facebook app a while back and started using Friendly instead.

The reason wasn't because of the background usage (which I didn't know about at the time) but because the phone kept getting very hot while using the app.

To be honest, the FB apps has been very poor throughout the years. You have to keep in mind, Facebook have little interest in providing you with a good experience. Their interest is pushing their business and their business is user tracking, user profiling and advertisement sales. So the app is going to be doing all kinds of weird and (to FB) wonderful things without your knowledge.

Facebook is probably one of the brands I trust the least so I will not be installing a 'new and improved' app in the future either.
 
sbailey4 said:
Yep what it doesn't explain tho is why you go to bed without charging your device so its ready for the next day.:confused:
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I usually only charge my phone when it is low, and overnight I don't usually lose more than 10%. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it good battery protocol to have fewer recharge cycles?
 
I've always turned off Autoplay on both the Twitter and Facebook apps on my iPhone 6 when on a cellular connection. And I usually close the app after running it. As such, I've never seen the major battery drain many people report here, so....
 
I removed Facebook from my iPhone, after reading about yesterdays news.

After you guys pointed out the battery statistics, I've found some interesting things, such as Facebook isn't the only offender.

Tumblr: 39 minutes on screen - 23 min background

Mail: 57 min on screen - 9 min background

News: 19 min on screen - 1 min background

Google Hangouts: 4 min on screen - 1.8 hrs background

Kik: 12 min on screen - 23 min background​

I had already removed Facebook so I can't give you the stats for that app.

What gives here? I've had Background App Refresh turned off on my iPhone since Day 1.

Obviously, Facebook isn't the only offender.
 
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Is this problem surely linked to the constant changing of volume in my music as well? volume goes up and down ALL the time at varying levels, quitting facebook/messenger apps often helps as many other posted in the last 2 years of the same issue being reported. this problem is pretty stupid considering the only fix supposedly is to turn off all the features that are supposed to make the apps better in order for it to behave with the overall OS and other apps?!
 
The application monitors every bit of data on the phone. Of course it uses a ton of battery.
 
I only keep the Messenger app. That app isn't a battery hog.

The main app is terrible though and removed it over a year ago. Used the Safari browser instead. Never looked back.
 
Dissonance said:
I usually only charge my phone when it is low, and overnight I don't usually lose more than 10%. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't it good battery protocol to have fewer recharge cycles?
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Recharge cycles are not about how many times the device is plugged in, but simply about how much it gets charged up. So if you charge it earlier and need less charging or charge it later and it needs more charging it's still the same thing as far as recharge cycles go. It's also better for the phone to be in the 40% - 80% battery charge more often rather than below that or even above that--it's not to say that it will cause some issues being outside that range sometimes or even often, but that range is still the overall better one.
 
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phillytim said:
I think that sounds a little crazy, but it may be worth investigating just to be sure.

But can someone confirm that Facebook is not monitoring every bit of data on the phone?
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It seems the question is more to make sure that Favebook is doing that type of monitoring (rather than trying to prove the opposite).
 
They also need to fix the bug where if you have FB open in the background it lowers your overall volume! That has to be the most annoying bug in iOS right now to me, having to manually force close the app is not time consuming but is a tedious task!
 
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phillytim said:
You _should_ be right, but the Facebook app is certainly not sandboxed enough if it's keeping itself alive and monitoring location and lord knows what else.
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So there's something that it's doing something that an app isn't allowed to do in iOS?
 
C DM said:
So there's something that it's doing something that an app isn't allowed to do in iOS?
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Correct, basically. Facebook shouldn't be doing anything in the background, if we have its Background App Refresh turned OFF; but Facebook is still doing stuff in the background.
 
phillytim said:
Correct, basically. Facebook shouldn't be doing anything in the background, if we have its Background App Refresh turned OFF; but Facebook is still doing stuff in the background.
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As explained a number of times earlier in the thread, background refresh doesn't affect the ability of an app to run in the background--that is a separate ability that has been there in iOS for a long time (before background refresh) and isn't something that can be controlled by the user (it's controlled by iOS itself).
 
Thanks, and apologies for not catching those explanations earlier.

But problem solved: I deleted the Facebook app, and I will be perfectly happy to use Safari to access my Facebook.com
 
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