Battery drain in stand-by

[cbruce]

I don't know if anybody else has experienced this, but the other day I had 100% on my iPad Pro when I left for work at 6:30 am. Upon returning at 3:30 pm, I picked up my iPad Pro and noticed that it was slightly warm (bad sign). I opened it and had 7% power! I rebooted and charged it to 100% and then disconnected power. By the next morning, it was down to 60%. It had to be either a rogue program or the new update. I remember installing Facebook Messenger the day of the power drain, so I uninstalled it this morning. After recharging to 100%, I have now had it on standby for 2.5 hours and it is still at 100%. Anybody else having issues with Messenger?

 

[twerppoet]

In case you didn't know.

Go to Settings > Battery. As long as the iPad has been running for a while there should be a list of apps with battery usage infor. You can see the last 24 hour or longer (up to 7 days). If you tap the clock icon then text will appear with each app breaking down the app's activity, showing you screen time vs background time.

This should give you a fair idea what, if any, apps are to blaime for excessive battery drain when the iPad is supposed to be asleep.

In Settings > General > Background App Refresh you can turn off an app's ability to do background tasks when it's not active (screen time) or playing some kind of media.

Not all apps honor this, but it should work with most. Those that don't are violating Apple's rules. FaceBook was doing this for a while, but they quickly fixed it when it was pointed out. Or at least they supposedly did. Make sure you have the latest vesion of FaceBook.

 

[ardchoille]

Facebook and FB Messenger used to run in the background, regardless of the background refresh setting, because they register themselves as VOIP apps/services. The only way to stop that was to uninstall them. I've heard that this hasn't changed, but haven't verified it for myself.

 

[twerppoet]

Facebook and FB Messenger used to run in the background, regardless of the background refresh setting, because they register themselves as VOIP apps/services. The only way to stop that was to uninstall them. I've heard that this hasn't changed, but haven't verified it for myself.

FaceBook put out an update where they claimed to have fixed the issue. According to them if you started playing a video (or one started playing automatically) FaceBook kept a background audio session going; even if there was no content actually being streamed. They said it was a bug, which isn't impossible.

(I'm pulling this from memory, so the details might be off a bit)

I saw this appear on my iPad Air a couple times before the fix. I've kept a casual eye out for it since the fix, and haven't seen it happen again.

The worst was something like 10 minutes of screen time and 56 hours of background over a 7 day period.

I still see FaceBook using a fair amount of background time (proportional to on screen time). A little more than the screen time, actually, but that might be because I rarely spend more than a few minutes in the FaceBook app. The times shown in my screen shot are fairly typical these days.

 

[cbruce]

FaceBook put out an update where they claimed to have fixed the issue. According to them if you started playing a video (or one started playing automatically) FaceBook kept a background audio session going; even if there was no content actually being streamed. They said it was a bug, which isn't impossible.

(I'm pulling this from memory, so the details might be off a bit)

I saw this appear on my iPad Air a couple times before the fix. I've kept a casual eye out for it since the fix, and haven't seen it happen again.

The worst was something like 10 minutes of screen time and 56 hours of background over a 7 day period.

I still see FaceBook using a fair amount of background time (proportional to on screen time). A little more than the screen time, actually, but that might be because I rarely spend more than a few minutes in the FaceBook app. The times shown in my screen shot are fairly typical these days.

I can definitely make a connection with Facebook Messenger and battery drain. After deleting Messenger and charging it to 100%, it's still at 100% 7 hours later in standby. I hate battery-hogging programs.

 

[twerppoet]

Thanks. I've never installed Messenger. What little messageing I do on FaceBook I do through the website app. This does not encourage me to make more use of it. Not that I'm tempted anyway.

 

[ardchoille]

I can definitely make a connection with Facebook Messenger and battery drain. After deleting Messenger and charging it to 100%, it's still at 100% 7 hours later in standby. I hate battery-hogging programs.

I'm guessing that FB Messenger still registers itself as a VOIP app/service. I don't understand how that is necessary for the app to function as a messaging app.

 

[scifan57]

I'm guessing that FB Messenger still registers itself as a VOIP app/service. I don't understand how that is necessary for the app to function as a messaging app.

Maybe Facebook just wants the Messenger app to run continuously in the background, collecting as much data as possible?

 

[ardchoille]

Maybe Facebook just wants the Messenger app to run continuously in the background, collecting as much data as possible?

That wouldn't surprise me in the least.