Facebook is taking steps to address some of the recent complaints about its iOS app consuming an inordinate amount of battery power. According to a new Facebook post by Ari Grant, the company’s Engineering Manager, Facebook has been looking into the causes of the reported problems and have identified some key issues and addressed some of them in the recent Facebook app update.
Grant notes that they found the problem was mostly related to a “CPU spin” in network code as well as improper management of background audio sessions, with the latter problem having been observed by users affected by the bug, which basically causes the background audio channel in iOS to remain open after watching a video on Facebook, even though nothing is actually playing.
Grant notes that the latest version of the Facebook app includes “some improvements” to address the CPU spin issue while also removing background audio completely. He goes on to mention that the issues have nothing to do with the Location History feature or anything else related to location services, and reassures users that Facebook does not access a user’s device location when the Facebook app is not running, even if all location-related features are fully enabled.
Grant concluded by apologizing for any inconvenience this has caused to users and notes that affected users should “see improvements in the version released today.”
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