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Friday 23 October 2015 3:47 pm

Facebook’s iOS app is killing your iPhone battery – but there’s a new update to fix it

By: Lynsey Barber

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If you feel like your iPhone battery just isn't giving you enough juice, don't blame Apple just yet.

Facebook has raised its hands and admitted its iOS app could be to blame and released an update to cut out some of that battery draining action.

One of those features was wonderfully described for the majority of users who don't know the first thing about code by Ari Grant, Facebook's engineering manager (where else but in a Facebook post).

"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."

And that wasn't the only issue…

"The second issue is with how we manage audio sessions. 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."

Grant did offer an apology too "for any inconvenience this has caused".

So, if you usually discount those update notifications, there's one big reason to get the latest one from Facebook: it might just improve your phone's battery life.

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