Hacker News Reader

Comment by hatty | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't seem groundbreaking or mysterious. Battery stats are available for every application in settings > battery. I took a moment to reflect on the background usage for Facebook, and I turned that off. I did not delete the app. You can do the same thing in general > background app refresh. You'll still get notifications, and your newsfeed will refresh only when you open the app.

View on HN

Until facebook forces its app to run in the background again by "accidentally" playing silent audio to get around that setting.[1]

https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/3opxhm/facebook_app...

There's no benefit to them doing it intentionally, so I'm not sure why you've scare-quoted.

How is there not? Worst case scenario it makes the app feel a bit more responsive since it's consistently less out of date.

How could this be a bug?

Sorry, I was referring to "accidentally" using background audio. They never tried to say that was accidental, the accident was that someone basically left an infinite loop and it vacuumed people's batteries. That's what I'm talking about when I say there's no benefit.

Now it's working as expected. It's not an accident and FB never claimed that.

To be fair, it's only a matter of time before Apple patches this, or in this case, Facebook "pushes a fix".

Otherwise the advice is sound, disabling backround app refresh is the better approach if you care about the app functionality and don't want to use the sub-par mobile browsing experience.

There's no need to lose out if you don't want to, regardless of the sensational headline.

> To be fair, it's only a matter of time before Apple patches this

I don't think that's being "fair" to the consumer. Sure it may get fixed in the future, but it's an issue now. And even if/when this specific issue got fixed, you can bet Facebook and others will look for other ways to get around this "limitation".

Since disabling nearly all app background activities, I don't have to worry about battery any longer. It makes a huge difference.

I'd be interested in knowing my battery stats but all I get is "Battery information will be available after using iPhone for a few minutes" (a solutionless problem that others also have, according to a Google search).

Now I don't use an iPhone as my main device, but many people are reporting that even turning off the background usage for facebook and still see a significant amount of background usage from the app.

I think background app refresh may be separate from location services, and facebook still tracks your location in the background. Try also turning off location services for fb (or set it to only when in use). Settings>Privacy>Location Services

Thats exactly what I was thinking. Or just turn the low power mode on, so that no app runs in the background. As easy as that!

iOS allows processes to run in the background (after being in the foreground) for some time even with this setting turned off. So this can be quite a difference (I don't use Facebook, but it's fairly noticeable with Viber).

Thank you for adding some sanity here. If someone's that obsessed with battery life, they can always delete all the apps off the phone and stay in airplane mode unless making a call. But then again, some people like to actually use their smart phone.

There's more to world than your little corner.

Last year I worked on development project with youth in Bolivia. It was common for them to use Facebook's website instead of app because it saved battery and data, both of which are extremely important to you if you are a poor teenager in a country with fairly expensive internet using a low-spec smartphone with generally poor battery life.

This way they could get a bit more out of it than they would otherwise which is a perfectly rational choice that doesn't deserve to be mocked.

True, but is this article really directed to poor kids in Bolivia?

Maybe if you're a poor teenager in a developing country, you should focus on saving your money rather than blowing it on a cell phone and data plan.

I don't think this comment is fair to them.

Computers are less widespread than phones because latter are cheaper and you can also take them where (cheaper or free) connection is. They are not just an entertainment device although they use it for that too (and why shouldn't they?).

Any research for school or otherwise will be done through phones as libraries for many are not easy to reach or well stocked. And social networks play an important information role beyond socialising that every human person needs purely for health benefits.

Shouldn't we ALL save our money instead of blowing it on a phone that can run Facebook better?

What standard are you trying to hold these teenagers to? I don't understand why they would need a cell phone less than any other teenager, or any other person really.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com