Facebook looking to fix iOS 9 app battery usage problem

Following recent reports that brought to light Facebook’s iOS 9 app excessively draining iPhone’s battery, a Facebook spokesperson has confirmed that it working on fixing the problem.

“We have heard reports of some people experiencing battery issues with our iOS app. We’re looking into this and hope to have a fix in place soon” said Facebook Spokesman.

Matt Galligan, CEO & Co-founder of Circa, discussed the issue via a post on Medium. He shared a screen shot of an iPhone battery usage information that showed that Facebook app used “1.7 hrs on screen – 3.4 hrs background”, accounting for 15% of battery drain.

He said, “Despite having background app refresh disabled, because the app isn’t “sleeping” properly when I hit the home button, it continues to drain”.

Another user Nick Heer wrote, “Facebook is actively creating channels to continue refreshing their app in the background when the user has explicitly stated that they do not want it to.”

Federico Viticci, founder and editor-in-chief of MacStories, conjectures that the Facebook app is “hijacking” audio sessions on iOS by keeping silent audio in the background whenever a video plays in the app.

“By default, videos on Facebook auto-play on both Wi-Fi and Cellular and few people ever bother to turn it off, that means there's a high chance the Facebook app will always find a way to play a video, keep audio in the background, and consume energy to perform background tasks”, he said.

Many other users reported the issue on Reddit. One user going by the name Vanilla_almond said, “Facebook Audio is at 87% battery usage over 24 hrs.”

Galligan says that the way Facebook app is built, it may not have an “easy” fix. Techcruch said:

“Facebook isn’t commenting on any of the various theories about what’s going on here — whether it’s audio hijacking and/or using VoIP to keep the app awake against users’ wishes. But it is apparently fixing something — bug or sly ‘feature’ — that’s responsible for the various reports of extraneous background app activity”.