Facebook's App Might Be Killing Your Battery

It's 2016, and my phone can't last more than a day or so on a full charge. For whatever reason, phone manufacturers still seem to care more about the size of the phone than how long the battery will last. And as it turns out, app developers aren't helping matters, either.

If you use Facebook's app on your smartphone, you're probably losing between 15-20% of your battery life to that app alone. Now you're probably thinking that everyone just needs to stop using the social media site altogether, as it's just as big of a drain on your soul. Well, soul-sucking aside, it turns out that you can still use the site on your phone and save a considerable amount of battery life.

The Guardian recently did some tests to see if the Facebook app has gotten any better since the reports of a vampire-like effect on your battery last year. As it turns out, when they spent a week using the mobile version of the site, they had on average, 20% more battery life left at the end of the day, when using it on Android. (Specifically, the phone tested was a Huawei Nexus 6P.)

When they ran a similar test using an iPhone 6S Plus for a week, they had very similar results. Using the mobile site for the exact same amount of time each day netted 15% more battery life when the tester plugged their phone back in at the end of each day.

For both tests, the Messenger app was left installed, so it was just specifically the Facebook app that was causing the battery-draining issues. This simply begs the question of "what the hell, Facebook?" The Facebook app is one of the most-downloaded on both platforms, and is sucking the life out of every phone that it's installed on.

If you don't mind the inconvenience of using the mobile version of the site, and you're struggling to make it through the whole day on a single charge, you might consider uninstalling the app. Or you can always get a new case with a spare battery in it. I hear Apple makes one that's not ugly at all.