Paranoia strikes most smartphone owners when their battery runs low. What caused that? Of course it can be a myriad of factors, but for iPhone owners a major culprit has emerged which will affect almost everyone: Facebook. That's the bad news. The good news is it can be easily fixed.
For Facebook, a company with near limitless (and some would say wastefully used) resources, the evidence is damning. Having previously been pinpointed as a drain by German iOS app developer Sebastian Düvel, now former Apple Genius Bar employee Scott Loveless has also pointed the finger.
Having noticed severe battery drain on his iPhone 5S, Loveless located the issue using Apple developer tool Instruments. Instruments is an activity monitor which lets developers view processes running in real time along with their consumption of memory and processing power.
'During this testing, Facebook kept jumping up on the process list even though I wasn't using it,' says Loveless. '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% to 17%. Crazy. I've never seen that happen before on an iPhone. The iPod touch exhibits this behavior, to my memory, although I haven't tested it in a while.'
Loveless set out to duplicate his findings and found it was not a one off. 'I have confirmed this behavior on multiple iPhones with the same result: percentage points actually increase after disabling these background functions of Facebook. Bad, Facebook, bad.'
Those hoping this is a glitch Facebook will address will be disappointed. Düvel reported similar problems back in November and found both Facebook and Facebook Messenger continually wake the phone every few minutes so they are not automatically shut down by iOS through lack of activity. This shows the ploy is deliberate (it lets the apps monitor your phone usage) and nothing has been done to modify it in the last five months.
Thankfully what has changed during this time is the ability to lessen its impact. Düvel recommended uninstalling both apps or manually closing them after every use, but neither is particularly practical. By contrast Loveless has come up with these simple steps:
Disable Location and Background App Refresh For Facebook 1. Go to 'Settings' 2. Open 'Privacy' 3. Choose 'Location Services' 4. Beside Facebook toggle it off
Disable Background App Refresh 1. Go to 'Settings' 2. Open 'General' 3. Choose 'Background App Refresh' 4. Beside Facebook toggle it off
Loveless also advises iPhone users to stop closing all their open apps (reopening them from scratch requires more battery life than when iOS automatically pauses them in the background), disable push email when your battery is low and allow push notifications only for critical apps.
A further good tip is to put your phone into Airplane mode in areas of poor cellular service. iOS increases power to the antenna when signal is low and this takes a rapid toll on the battery. You can always leave on WiFi if there's a wireless signal available. Disabling cellular data also makes a massive difference in my own experience (you'll have noticed this when opting not to roam abroad) but again this is often only practical occasionally.
Interestingly Loveless says that while Facebook may be the biggest sinner when it comes to consuming your iPhone battery, it isn't the only one. He says WhatsApp also pulls a similar trick and considering the two are now stable mates after Facebook's eye watering $19BN takeover it is hard to see its habits improving any time soon.
Android users feeling smug right about now shouldn't. Facebook has long been pinpointed by users on Google 's platform as a major battery drain there as well. Disabling Location and Chat Heads in both Facebook and Facebook Messenger settings are also the best remedy here.
Well unless you are now reconsidering your position on uninstalling both apps after all.
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