Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) confirmed they are investigating the issue related to their iOS app which is draining the iPhone’s battery, even if the app is running on the background.
According to TechCrunch, a spokesman of the company said that “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.”
Several Facebook users commented about the problem last week, publishing complaining posts on MacRumors Forums . One user reported that the app was responsible for 39 percent of his phone’s battery usage on a six day period, even though he disabled the background data refresh.
“Because the app isn’t ‘sleeping’ properly when I hit the home button, it continues to drain. That extraneous background usage, despite not providing any value to me at all, is keeping the app alive 2x longer than my actual usage,” said Circa co-founder Matt Galligan, according to TechCrunch.
Users found that disabling the autoplay video feature helped save an important amount of battery capacity, although Facebook didn’t say that this feature was involved in the issue. There is a theory that this autoplay feature could be playing a muted audio track running in the background, consuming energy, even after closing the app.
The company hasn’t made any comments about the different theories or rumours about what is causing the battery bug, they only stated that they are already working to fix the problem. Some experts recommend, that for the moment, users can delete the app and get into Facebook through a mobile explorer, like Chrome or Safari.
Source: TechCrunch