Facebook fixes iOS battery drain issue, tells everyone it’s sorry

Facebook is publicly apologizing to users of its iOS app after it was discovered that it drained people’s batteries.

The issue was identified last week by Circa co-founder Matt Gilligan, writing on Medium that even with the background refresh turned off and the app shut down, it accounted for 15 percent of all battery drain in one charge.

“Whether we’re talking about battery life, data usage, or load times, they’re all valuable resources to mobile customers,” he said, demanding that Facebook make a “priority” in fixing the annoyance.

More than a week after Gilligan’s post exposing the problem affecting the iPhone’s most downloaded app ever, Facebook’s engineering manager Ari Grant said the problem has been fixed in a public post on the social network.

Turns out, the issue centers around “CPU spin,” said Grant explaining “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.” In this case the app was repeatedly asking the phone to carry out an unnecessary task. That repeating process caused the battery to bleed energy.

That, combined with a faulty audio issue that wasn’t powered off after watching a video, resulting in the unintended and the very annoying battery drainage. “We are sorry for any inconvenience this has caused,” Grant wrote.

An update being released today is supposed to fix the issues.

Images via Shutterstock. 

https://staging.digiday.com/?p=142511

More in Media

NewFronts Briefing: Samsung, Condé Nast, Roku focus presentations on new ad formats and category-specific inventory

Day two of IAB’s NewFronts featured presentations from Samsung, Condé Nast and Roku, highlighting new partnerships, ad formats and inventory, as well as new AI capabilities.

The Athletic to raise ad prices as it paces to hit 3 million newsletter subscribers

The New York Times’ sports site The Athletic is about to hit 3 million total newsletter subscribers. It plans to raise ad prices as as a result of this nearly 20% year over year increase.

NewFronts Briefing: Google, Vizio and news publishers pitch marketers with new ad offerings and range of content categories

Day one of the 2024 IAB NewFronts featured presentations from Google and Vizio, as well as a spotlight on news publishers.