AppleInsider Staff
Responding to recent complaints that its iOS app excessively drains iPhone battery life, Facebook on Thursday pushed out a partial fix, explaining the problem was in part caused by a background audio bug.
According to Facebook engineering manager Ari Grant, the battery drain issue stems from multiple problems in the app's code, some of which have been addressed in today's update.
Grant said Facebook discovered a "CPU spin" in its network code, meaning the app constantly performed a process without end. The updated app version does not solve the problem completely, but contains improvements that should help cut down on unnecessary computations.
The second issue was an audio management bug that kept audio sessions perpetually open even in the absence of playable media, effectively "playing" a silent audio track. Apple lets apps run audio in the background, allowing users to browse the Web while listening to Spotify, for example. Grant said that while Facebook was kept awake in the background due to this bug, the app was not performing any tasks. Background audio has been removed completely to solve the issue.
Grant also quashed speculation that Facebook's Location History feature was responsible for excessive battery drain. He added that Facebook does not access location data in the background unless users opt in to the service by switching Location Access to Always in Settings and enabling Location History in the app.
Facebook version 42.0 is available as a free download from the iOS App Store.
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55 Comments
AppleInsider should take a look at the processor load on Mac's when Dropbox is opened in Safari, even though no transfers are happening Dropbox open nearly maxes out all 4 cores in my MacBook Pro on 10.7.5 & temps soar even with the fans all the way up. I don't know about OSX beyond 10.7. Something is wrong though.
Nah, it's all about location tracking. Facebook is known to hire hackers and jailbreakers. Pretty sure Facebook can even find and use backdoors Apple or Google arent even aware of. If they can do this on iOS, I cant even start to imagine what they can do on Android. No hating tho, I love my OP1. This is why I wont buy the Oculus Rift. Facebook is sneaky AF. I mean, c'mon, the company records posts or comments you started to type but didnt send!
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How about fixing the severe crash every 5 seconds issue. Ever since the latest update the FB app has been near useless. I even deleted and reinstalled to no avail. I had also noticed my batter was dead quicker but had no idea FB was the stupid culprit. Good to know.
"Some of which". So it's still a buggy mess.