Facebook and Facebook Messenger are the two most popular apps on Android right now. No matter the fact the two apps are quite popular and used by smartphone owners from all over the world, the two apps suffer from numerous problems. Facebook, for instance, is extremely unoptimized, slowing the whole system down when installed. You don’t have to use it, it will slow your phone. And both apps suffer from massive battery drain problems, some studies found that only by having Facebook and Messenger on your phone (you don’t even have to use the two apps) your battery will last up to twenty percent shorter.
On top of all that, it seems the two apps can heat up the mobile devices pretty badly.
hehe the @facebook apps turned my phone into a Samsung Note 7. Phone was burning up. Uninstalled the apps and battery drain is gone
— Ssentongo (@roger_sent) January 10, 2017
Here’s another user talking about battery drainage:
shoutout to facebook/messenger apps for destroying 90% of my phone battery in three hours when i wasn't even using them #deleted
— kat 🐱 (@kataykin) January 10, 2017
This is just a small sample of users talking about the battery drain problems caused by Facebook and Messenger. Twitter and Reddit are full of posts from users noticing their phones get hot and suffer from awful battery life when having the two apps installed. This is caused by the catastrophic optimization since both apps use resources and battery power even when not in use, and while they are used, the battery problems become unbearable.
David Marcus, VP of messaging products in Facebook, noticed numerous complaints and shared the solution to the problem. He stated that the problem was “isolated” and “fixed server side.” It seems that all you have to do in order to fix the apps is to restart both Messenger and Facebook. As simple as it sounds, it sure doesn’t sound like a full-proof solution.
issue was isolated and fixed server side. If you restart Messenger the problem should be gone now. Very sorry.
— David Marcus (@davidmarcus) January 10, 2017
If you still suffer from battery drain issues even after restarting apps, one possible solution is to use Facebook Lite, of to use the site via Chrome (messages can work if select “show desktop version” in Chrome after you open Facebook’s site) with notifications turned on.
Oh, and let’s not forget another brilliant move by Facebook. The company announced that starting with the first days of 2017, a new type of ads will be present in videos. The ads will appear in the middle of videos and they won’t be skippable. At least the publishers won’t be able to show them until a video is viewed for at least 20 seconds by users.