14 DAY TRIAL // A number of iPhone users complained recently that the Facebook app was causing unnecessary battery usage on their devices, claiming that what was believed to be location tracking running in the background was at fault for the huge drain.
Facebook confirmed that there was indeed a battery issue on some iOS devices, and in a post rolled out recently, the company not only introduced an updated version of their client but also offered more information on exactly what caused the battery problem.
Ari Grant, software engineer at Facebook, explains that it all came down to two different issues: a CPU spin in the network code and a problem impacting audio sessions management.
The first caused the application to perform a process in background without actually finishing it, and while this new version doesn't completely fix the problem, it doesn't include a temporary workaround to reduce unnecessary checks that are run by the iOS client.
No more background audio
The second, however, is the one that was “more” responsible for the battery drain. Basically, if you used Facebook to watch a video or listen to a song, the audio session remains on even when closing the app. Apple allows audio to run in the background to be able to listen to music while doing something else on your phone, but the Facebook app failed to terminate the process completely.
Since it remained awake, the feature was using more battery than it was supposed to, so Facebook decided to remove background audio completely.
Grant also explained that there's no issue with background location tracking and everything should be running smoothly in this regard.
“The issues we have found are not caused by the optional Location History feature in the Facebook app or anything related to location. If you haven't opted into this feature by setting Location Access to Always and enabling Location History inside the app, then we aren't accessing your device's location in the background. The issues described above don't change this at all,” he said.
As usual, the updated Facebook client for iOS is available in the App Store, so go check your device for new versions or download it manually here.