Facebook app draining Android battery life

Facebook's performance on Android phones has experienced many issues in the past. Android owners using the Facebook app have been known to complain about various issues, the most frustrating of which is its persisting and draining effect on battery life.

Despite Facebook's claims to address the issue, the problem persists. A recent post by Android blogger Russell Holly said by deleting the Facebook app, one can optimise performance of Android smartphones. His post caused a string of others to follow in his footsteps and dump the social networking app to improve battery life.

In his post, Holly outlined that he noticed some performance issues on multiple Android phones. On paying close attention to determine the source, he discovered that the Facebook app was "one of the more egregious resource hogs". Holly then proceeded to uninstall the app to see how it affected the performance levels. "Not only did my performance issues go away entirely, but I discovered I didn't actually lose any of the Facebook features I cared about by uninstalling the app," he added.

The post lead to Reddit users following suit, with one Reddit user, pbrandes_eth, testing the app's real-time effect on Android battery life. The users found that other smartphone apps on Android phones operated 15% faster after they uninstalled Facebook and its Messenger app. Fifteen different apps were tested by a team of Androiders and they documented the results, providing an undeniable proof of how the social networking giant's smartphone app has some serious performance issues.

Samuel Gibbs, a tech writer for The Guardian, reported supporting results when he tried verifying the test by checking the performance on his Facebook app devoid Huawei Nexus 6P. He noted that his phone was optimised and was saving 20% more battery at the end of the day. According to Gibbs' report, the app was vacuuming more power in the background, rather than directly utilising the Android smartphone's in-built battery.

Both Holly and Gibbs, supported by a multitude of Reddit users, suggest uninstalling the Facebook app, especially given that users are unlikely to miss out on major notifications, thanks to Google Chrome's Facebook-linked notification updates.

Facebook is believed to be currently working on fixing various Android-related issues. The social media giant's chief product officer Chris Cox has even urged most of his teams to switch to using Android phones till the issue has been resolved. This unusual approach may just expedite matters.