Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Snap chat battery life
- Thread starter atlchamp
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I understand but he we pay hundreds to enjoy our phones, not to worry about our battery life even though it is important, we can recharge anytime, anywhere haha
Do you even use snapchat? If you don't understand how snapchat works I don't think you should be joining the discussion here.
Travel mode is a pretty good idea actually. In snapchat settings, enabling travel mode, reduces background activities and thus, battery consuption by updating content only when you open the app.
cuz you use them more often
travel mode is the first thing i enabled when i got snapchat. saves data and constant reloads
And if I'm new to Snapchat and/or haven't really explored the settings, or even have been considering it and want to find out more about various things?
And it seems like more than Snapchat has been under discussion in the thread as well, so perhaps what was mentioned might be related to them as well in some way?
But "thanks" for the "useful tip".
Last edited:
The biggest reason for the drain I've seen is that even with Travel Mode enabled Snapchat still uses on average 2-5% CPU usage while backgrounded (background app refresh is off btw). Any other app backgrounded only uses about 0.2-0.5 cpu if any. Something is causing the activity and the only way around this is to close the app out of multitasking.
Attachments
Keep in mind that using a camera that captures GPS data to modify the EXIF data in the picture and then sending ~1Mb - 4Mb file sizes over a cellular network requires some battery. I'm not a snapchat user but never wanted to be one because running the app is just another layer of battery usage that is already getting drained pretty hard.
It's about like this
Opening the app - uses battery until the app closes
The app processing your chats
Gathering facebook or user info for changes in friends
Gathering updated photos
The app opening Camera to take a picture uses battery until camera closes
Camera takes a picture
GPS data is gathered for the picture
picture is saved
OR.... Picture is selected
Photos is opened and closed when the picture is selected
Picture is closed
the app dismisses the camera and allows you to add text
the app reprocesses the image and adds the text.
the app then sends the data out for approximately 5 seconds (on a decent network)
(loop for as many times as you send photos)
Close the app (run shutdown tasks like storing data to the disk for standby)
That is a lot whereas you'd only need to do the camera section and use your messages to send a message otherwise. There is no extra layer that would cause your phone to die even faster. If there are ads, then every time an ad pops whether it's full screen or just an ad bar, that data still needed to be downloaded to your device. This is also assuming that Snapchat doesn't use data collection to send back data about your usage in the application back to the developer or a 3rd party advertising agency.
I have nothing against snapchat and I'm not trying to deter anyone from using it, I'm just saying there is a lot going on, so if battery life is a problem for you and snapchat is to blame, let the selfies wait until you're on wi-fi or 5 bars on a fast network.
It's about like this
Opening the app - uses battery until the app closes
The app processing your chats
Gathering facebook or user info for changes in friends
Gathering updated photos
The app opening Camera to take a picture uses battery until camera closes
Camera takes a picture
GPS data is gathered for the picture
picture is saved
OR.... Picture is selected
Photos is opened and closed when the picture is selected
Picture is closed
the app dismisses the camera and allows you to add text
the app reprocesses the image and adds the text.
the app then sends the data out for approximately 5 seconds (on a decent network)
(loop for as many times as you send photos)
Close the app (run shutdown tasks like storing data to the disk for standby)
That is a lot whereas you'd only need to do the camera section and use your messages to send a message otherwise. There is no extra layer that would cause your phone to die even faster. If there are ads, then every time an ad pops whether it's full screen or just an ad bar, that data still needed to be downloaded to your device. This is also assuming that Snapchat doesn't use data collection to send back data about your usage in the application back to the developer or a 3rd party advertising agency.
I have nothing against snapchat and I'm not trying to deter anyone from using it, I'm just saying there is a lot going on, so if battery life is a problem for you and snapchat is to blame, let the selfies wait until you're on wi-fi or 5 bars on a fast network.
oh for sure. 100% agreed. But my location services are off for the app (as are most apps). But i think the main issue with it is that its a background battery hog. Facebook, IG and other popular apps don't consume nearly as much CPU while backgrounded. Theres def something going on with the app even tho its "inactive"
They may be backgrounded, but when you use an app that performs a GET request from facebook, it's going to perform that GET request at m.facebook.com, even the facebook mobile app does that. When you send the picture it sends a POST request to a server owned by snapchat then the picture is delivered to the other person's device.
Saying that Facebook Mobile is backgrounded as you put it is like saying I'm taking my car to California but my sister's car is in the garage in terms of relevancy. It's a common misconception for a lot of people, also you'll need to turn off location services for the camera app if you want to disable gathering GPS data from the pictures you take as you end up opening the camera app (within snapchat) to take the picture, but if you do that then you won't have the nice timeline in photos of where you took the photo.
Snapchat doesn't work like this though - it has an always-on camera feed and doesn't take an actual photo, it takes a screenshot from the camera feed (to make the image smaller for sending over their servers and also to make sure the photo experience is lag free on all devices). This means that the camera is never actually turning off and is kept on at all times in order allow people to switch from their chat list and back to the camera without any lag/camera reboots. It also means that the app doesn't need to know whether you are taking a photo (pressing the button) or a video (holding the button) as if it was taking an actual photo then it would first have to wait to see if you were planning to hold down the button for a video, slowing down the user experience.
Gotcha, so you still have to have the camera powered on at all times and update the frames in the app for a live feed. The app does know if you are pressing the button or holding the button, as I'm an in-house app developer there are functions for that, and if you are pressing the button there is a method that sends that data somewhere, holding the button just means it's a continuous stream to where ever it is going. The app still has to process stuff. If the app didn't "do stuff" nothing would happen, and that might actually be worse on your battery by keeping an open stream up than it would if you just took the picture or video and sent it all at once.
Also with Grand Central Dispatch and devices having multiple cores they can send the processing stuff to a background thread which wouldn't slow down the user experience, it would just slow down the things that you want to happen but don't care how quickly they happen.