Facebook IS killing your smartphone battery, admits social network
The previous version of the Facebook app on iOS was KILLING iPhone owners' battery life
FACEBOOK'S iPhone and iPad app is responsible for DRAINING the battery life of smartphone owners around the world, the US social network has admitted.
 
Facebook’s official iOS mobile app is killing your battery life but there is a fix.
The US social network has acknowledge the widespread reports of incredibly high levels of background activity causing battery drain on Apple mobile devices.
Users last week flooded social media with complaints about the app – currently ranked the third most popular iOS app in the UK – which drained over a THIRD of your iPhone battery.
 
But until Facebook released a fix for the application there was no option but to either start carrying a Lightning Charging Cable at all times or delete the app.
Thankfully Facebook has today rolled out an update to the iPhone and iPad app to boost battery life.
Engineering Manager on iOS at Facebook Ari Grant said the hugely popular social network has "found a few key issues and have identified additional improvements" with the problematic app.
"We recently heard reports of some people experiencing battery issues with the Facebook iOS app and have been looking into the causes of these problems," he explained on his Facebook page.
 
"The first issue we found was a “CPU spin” in our network code. A CPU spin is like a child in a car asking, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” with the question not resulting in any progress to reaching the destination.
"This repeated processing causes our app to use more battery than intended."
The Facebook engineering manager believes the latest update "has some improvements that should start making this better."
 
Facebook IS killing your smartphone battery, admits social network
The previous version of the Facebook iOS app is sapping battery life in the background
The previous version of the Facebook app was also mismanaging its audio sessions, Mr Grant continues.
"If you leave the Facebook app after watching a video, the audio session sometimes stays open as if the app was playing audio silently. 
"This is similar to when you close a music app and want to keep listening to the music while you do other things, except in this case it was unintentional and nothing kept playing. 
"The app isn't actually doing anything while awake in the background, but it does use more battery simply by being awake. 
"Our fixes will solve this audio issue and remove background audio completely."
 
Facebook iOS Manager Ari Grant has apologised for the issues with the app and reiterated the US firm's commitment to battery usage within its mobile software.
He wrote: "We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.
"We are committed to continuing to improve the battery usage of our app and you should see improvements in the version released today."
The latest version of the Facebook iOS app is now available in the App Store.

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