Facebook = battery killer - not a setting issue

steve_ma

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Oct 4, 2011
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Anyone else experienced Facebook to be a battery hog? Even with all sync settings disabled and no notifications, it was still my biggest battery draining app, even when I wasn't using it. No love clearing the cache either. I finally uninstalled it and my battery life is crazy good again. Too bad. I did like the app.
 

Rukbat

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Feb 12, 2012
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I don't use it that much, but it's way behind Android itself in my battery usage list.
 

steve_ma

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Oct 4, 2011
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Download Battery Doctor
I have gsam pro and system panel, so between them, I feel like I had a good sense of what was going on. Maybe just a bad fb install? The phone is only a week old, and I did a factory reset right after the lollipop update. Maybe I'll reinstall tonight and see how it goes tomorrow.
 

steve_ma

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Oct 4, 2011
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Thanks. If others aren't seeing this, then I'll reinstall fb and report back in a couple of days.
 

Gray Area

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Dec 5, 2012
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I've recently taken Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a couple of my shopping apps off of my gs5. Then I went on my chrome browser: went to the mobile sites of all of those companies, favorited the sites, logged in to my accounts and created a shortcut to the mobile site on my home screen which works very similar to the apps without draining my battery or hogging space on my hard drive. This has almost doubled my battery life.

Posted via the Android Central App
 

B. Diddy

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Mar 9, 2012
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There's definitely a problem with recent Facebook versions. I uninstalled it from my Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 because it was using upwards of 20% of absolute (not relative) battery, which is unusually high. This was with video autoplay off, manual data refresh, no photo syncing, and no messenger. I just tried reinstalling it earlier today, after seeing an update listed for 2/26/15, but it still hogged battery. Currently just using the mobile web interface.
 

steve_ma

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Oct 4, 2011
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Same thing.. Reinstalled fb last night, turned off all sync and notifications. Opened the app like once and sure enough, by mid morning, it's climbing back to the top of the list of battery draining apps. Seeeyyaa
 
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Broncho

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May 24, 2010
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I noticed the same thing with my G3 and my wife just started noticing it with her S5. Been going on for me for about two weeks. I've gotten in the habit of when I get done with Facebook I go to my recent apps and kill it there. Doing that it has been OK, but if that stops working I'll probably take it off.
 

abackholm

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Feb 16, 2015
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Even with syncing off and FB Messenger uninstalled, the FB client does maintain an always-on connection to the Facebook servers. Depending on your network type (it's especially bad in 3G and older LTE networks) and coverage (maintaining the connection gets really battery-expensive in poor coverage). Such chatty network usage typically doesn't surface in battery monitors as it is not a lot of traffic and Android doesn't do too well in attributing the network-related battery usage to the right app.

Not sure whether that would be the root cause, but if the issue continues after your reinstall, I'd be happy to share the tools and help analyze what may be going on.
 

steve_ma

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Oct 4, 2011
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Thanks abackholm. I just uninstalled it and will use the browser version for now. It retains enough of the functionality for the time being, or at least till they issue a release that behaves a little better
 
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KJ78

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Jun 15, 2011
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Anyone else experienced Facebook to be a battery hog? Even with all sync settings disabled and no notifications, it was still my biggest battery draining app, even when I wasn't using it. No love clearing the cache either. I finally uninstalled it and my battery life is crazy good again. Too bad. I did like the app.

I am having the same issue. Facebook takes up as much battery as leaving the screen on auto bright all day.

I uninstalled and reinstalled FB. It worked better for a day or 2. Again today high battery usage is back.
 

terryb99

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Feb 6, 2015
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I've recently taken Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and a couple of my shopping apps off of my gs5. Then I went on my chrome browser: went to the mobile sites of all of those companies, favorited the sites, logged in to my accounts and created a shortcut to the mobile site on my home screen which works very similar to the apps without draining my battery or hogging space on my hard drive. This has almost doubled my battery life.

Posted via the Android Central App

thank you for this! my S5 is a real phone again, lol

battery life is incredible for the last 24 hours since deleting the facebook and twitter aps.
 

steve_ma

Well-known member
Oct 4, 2011
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thank you for this! my S5 is a real phone again, lol

battery life is incredible for the last 24 hours since deleting the facebook and twitter aps.
No kidding. Same thing here. I uninstalled Facebook, Instagram, pinterest and Twitter in lieu of the browser based interfaces. Still have 60% left after 14.5 hours and that's with pretty heavy use.
 
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KJ78

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Jun 15, 2011
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I removed Facebook last night after it used more battery than 5 hours of screen time. Battery life is easily doubled today. Bye bye Suckerberg.
 

Gray Area

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Dec 5, 2012
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thank you for this! my S5 is a real phone again, lol

battery life is incredible for the last 24 hours since deleting the facebook and twitter aps.

Your welcome, I've gotten up to 22hrs under ideal conditions (wifi and wifi calling on) I use to have to charge my phone 3-4 times in a 24hr period now usually just 1-2 and the speed of the phone has greatly increased (no lag whatsoever) Lollipop runs smooth as advertised and I finally can see the GS5 for the great phone that it is! I don't think I'll need to upgrade to that pretty gs6 after all! Lol

Posted via the Android Central App on my Galaxy S5
 

Gray Area

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Dec 5, 2012
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No kidding. Same thing here. I uninstalled Facebook, Instagram, pinterest and Twitter in lieu of the browser based interfaces. Still have 60% left after 14.5 hours and that's with pretty heavy use.

Awesome! Glad I could help!

Posted via the Android Central App on my Galaxy S5
 

f308gt4

Well-known member
Feb 15, 2011
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I did this also, and did notice a slight increase in battery life (mine was pretty good before I deleted facebook and messenger). I also noticed that my phone appears to be using less data. I need to see how it goes over the next few days to confirm.