Update: Version 1.3.1 is out, and Facebook says it should fix the battery issues. What's everybody seeing?
Original: The bad news: Facebook's recent update for Android indeed is beating the crap out of your battery, as many of you have pointed out in our forums. The good news: They're aware of it, and a fix is in the works. Responding on its official Facebook for Android page, erm, Facebook says:
Hi folks, a number of you have commented on seeing a battery drain on your device since installing the new Facebook for Android app. We have identified the bug that is causing this battery drain and are working on a fix now. As soon as the patch is ready, we will push out an update. Thanks for the quick feedback and for your patience as we get this fixed!
Until then, you might have to uninstall. Hang in there, folks. [Facebook for Android] Thanks, Junior!
65 Comments
Oh good so maybe my DINC's battery isn't as bad ask thought. I just bought it and installed the new Facebook app when it launched.
lol... kinda saw this one coming when that's the only change i made to my Dinc this weekend and then got 12 hours. Awesome Facebook... awesome.
Did you mean two hours? Caustic you get 12 I want you DINC lol.
must be that awesome sedio 1750mAh battery i got from androidcentral.com.
must be that awesome 17.5AH battery I got from androidcentral.com
Right!
Okay, so Facebook doesn't update their app for at *least* 6 months, and then when they finally do, it's buggy?
Time to hire a new dev team, Facebook. Ugh.
Yeah! Software NEVER has bugs! They should NEVER EVER be allowed to release an update to fix those bugs that shouldn't exist!
Weeee. My tip made the front page. :) And, Facebook for Android is getting the crap beat out of them on Facebook.
Can't say I've noticed! Htc desire on froyo
I updated Facebook about the same time I updated my EVO to Froyo. While I had to go back and make some changes like turning off Google talk, news, etc.....I wonder how much of my battery drain had to do with the Facebook app?
I haven't noticed any problems myself. The only time my battery drained faster than normal was with Launcher Pro. I know this is off topic but I loved that launcher; just not the battery drain.
Had to uninstall, killed my battery in 2 hours. I knew it wasn't my X. Way to go Facebook!!!!!!!!!! Hurry up and fix don't want to use Moto social, Blah!
Edit: Reinstalled and did no good. Still sucked the life out of battey. Uninstalling again. Blur here here I come, Blah! Blah! Blah!
Haha, I see the ad for University of South Alabama...reminds me of the good old days back in Mobile, AL....sorry if that was off topic
I like the old setup anyway. But I do miss facebook for WebOS
I was wondering why my Awake Time was almost matching my Up Time. Lame....
Seriously facebook, how hard is it to create a decent app. Android phones are currently the top 5 sellers. Mark Z, get with the program and find new Devs.
after seeing this post, i went into to my task killer (which i have almost completely stopped using after reading all the posts about it here) and there was a line item for something called "College". When i requested details on said item, i found out it is facebook. why is it listed as college? anyone else noticed this? i use a droid x.
Why can we not delete this app altogether without rooting?
Please Google!!!
The only reason I can come up with is that facebook started off being only for college students. You used to be able to register only with your school e-mail such as yourname@school.edu.
i don't think that is it. i haven't been in college for 7 years, and i'm registered with my gmail address. i killed it with task killer, opened facebook and went back into task killer. it is still listed as college (with a little newspaper icon). it listed as facebook before the update?! that is just weird.
Interesting...I didn't notice it at all...but wait, that would probably be because I have set my FB refresh to MANUAL! :-) Personally, as many Notifications and e-mails I do get...checking FB can wait. :-P Saves some battery juice too.
just noticed the event times are completely borked.
The app lists an event as 19th 1am, actual facebook lists it as 18th 10pm. That really doesn't help! checked it again and yup, all of my event times are off by a day or a number of hours of something.
I was worried about this update when I had to force quit the first boot up, but then was happy to see events and messages are finally included (but not mad that event times are completely messed up).
But to this article's point, I haven't noticed any drain on my Nexus One 2.2, Though maybe it's the refresh interval causing pain for some??
I noticed this last night while I was digging around to find out why my Froyo'd Evo was killing the battery like it never had before.
One weird thing that I've got is in my contacts that I have linked to a facebook account there's a bunch of extra "links" all labeled "com.facebook.auth.login". Some contacts only have one extra entry labeled this, and other contacts have 10+. Anybody else have this oddity?
I noticed a lot of extra entries under each of my contacts that are linked to Facebook. What I did to fix it was from the menu screen on Facebook, I went into the settings on the Facebook app & selected to not sync with contacts. That made all that extra stuff disappear. My phone is synced with Facebook so syncing on the app created extra & duplicated entries. Try it. Maybe it might fix it. Good luck
I had the same thing going on with my EVO too. I think it was a conflict in having checked off sync contacts with Facebook (the one from the Market v 1.3.1) and with Facebook for HTC Sense. I uncheck the "Sync contacts" in the Facebook 1.3.1 and now everything seems fine.
Haven't noticed any problem with battery drain. But have to say that while I like features on the updated Facebook app, liked the old one too. But I am former "crapberry" user. Their Facebook app was horrible & barely worked. So the Facebook app for Android is like a dream compared to what I had...
HTC Hero.
I'm glad its Facebook killin my battery instead of the Froyo I manually installed on my D1. And BTW on the D1 with Froyo it gives the option to uninstall the update and not the whole app. Is this a feature of Froyo? Or specific to the D1.
Thanks FaceBook :( I don't even use this frigg'in app and I have to put up with this crap because my N1 won't let me uninstall this app.
I just noticed that I now have 1857 facebook contacts . My Facebook for HTC sense has the correct number of 230 friends. Some friends are duplicated 10 times. Others were not duplicated. This may be a symptom.
As if the FB app wasn't already enough of an Epic Fail
I noticed the notifications take me to a dead page too
coming from a blackberry, i didnt think there could be a worse facebook app than what was available. getting an android device proved me wrong. lol.
I disagree. The fb app for bberry was horrible, it would chronically send notifications to my phone for comments and posts i had gotten months earlier, friend requests that didnt exist, and pretty much didnt do anything it was supposed to, not to mention taking over an hour to load my friends list. This one for droid isn't good at all but it's not nearly as bad as the bberry one. My major problem with the one for android is it wont give me notifications unless i refresh them myself, and the way i know i have one is when it goes to my email
makes sense....i unplugged my phone this morning and when i got into the car, the battery already decreased 3%....and i didnt even turn the phone on! lol
just downloaded the 1.3.1 update
New update!!!!!!!!
Just installed, holy crap what a difference.
So the new Facebook app works now?
Haven't really noticed. It's been almost 10 hours unplugged and I'm still running strong
well the update fixed it on my phone, 3 hours unplugged and only 75% battery with little to no wireless signal at that, Last night I was in St Louis at the Cards game and perfect signal and 3 hours off charger in I was down to 45% and having to turn off sync to have the phone make it to last the rest of the game.
Literally this evening as I was watching my battery meter it would drop a percent every 2 to 3 minutes before the update.
now if they'd get the android app to work like the iphone app it'd be perfect!
I'm still getting Force Close too! This is crap!
Still getting a FC every time I look at friends. Uninstalled.
This update was a huge failure. While the little updates were nice, the biggest problem with Sense users still exists. HTC version of FB only allowed syncing of all or none of your contacts. So did old FB app from Market. Now new version of FB gives option to only sync "with contacts in phonebook", but when that option is selected, the app syncs all contacts anyway, and doesn't include pictures unless you sign in and sync with the HTC version of FB. Epic failure...my non HTC Android device never had that problem.
HTC's Facebook for Sense DOES allow you to only sync info (and pics) for contacts already on your phone/list... The option is pretty buried but it's in there, I had a hard time finding it the other day when someone asked me (after I had it set up on my EVO the day I got it).
this is why i'm still using bloo.
I am on a Samsung Captivate and had decent battery life until I updated facebook. Man was it horrible. Halfway through my day and my phone shut off and no charger in sight...but now with this new update it seems to be working alot better. Despite it's flaws the official facebook app is still the best in my book.
Just installed on my Dinc. Looks like it's still killing my battery (dropped 4% since I installed it 5 minutes ago).
Also, still forces close when I tap on "Friends".
Awesome job Facebook... I'm really starting to miss the Facebook app from my Storm. It worked, and it didn't redirect me to the website for half of the features.
I knew there had to be a reason my battery was draining so fast for no reason.
yup version 1.3.1 is just as bad as 1.3.0 on battery consumption. It runs in the background constantly. At least there is the option to uninstall the update for the time being. It also redirecting you to the mobile site for notifications is pretty lame. sub par effort from Facebook.
Thank goodness you can uninstall updates. I wish they'd make notifications open in the program.
Now they can fix the contact sync issue where every time it syncs it duplicates all the facebook contacts on the phone.
Yeah the battery issue is NOT fixed at all. Same crap. Come on FB, fix this up.
My battery has been awful since the update..... Still not fixed. Hopefully soon!! It's starting to make my phone sluggish.
fixed here people screaming its not fixed i would say look at other programs zapping the battery
im running CM6 on my evo and im @ 18 hours since i pulled the charges and still have 86% batt life .
or if you think you can fix it step up and fix it or shut your hole
I saw this "fix" article before I left for work this morning, so I went ahead and re-updated to 1.3.1. Bad move since it still is killing my battery and I am without a charger today. Uninstalled and restarted, so hopefully it rolls back without any issues.
I just went back to 1.2. Tired of going to sleep with a 70% or so battery and waking up to a dead phone. I have calls I expect in the mornings. The 1.3.1 update was still not working properly, so I just reverted until there is a more stable release.
installed the update this morning and my battery is still getting raped
Same here, did the update no change at all to battery life. uninstalled..
I'm also having trouble where each of my contacts that are linked to FB now have 20-30 links in each. Come on Facebook lets get it right.
I can set my facebook app to update manually, but can i set the facebook account on Social Networking to never update the statuses of my friends? i took the widget off the homescreen so i wouldnt see it but it definitely still updates in the background and i know for sure it's raping my battery life. any help would be amazing.
PS deactivating the fb account isnt an option cuz i want my contacts to have fb pictures
The new version was destroying my battery so luckily android lets you delete the update. But I still had the problem with 3000 facebook contacts. What I did to fix this on my aria was go to accounts and sync and delete my facebook account. Not facebook for htc sense. Now I got some memory back and my battery can last more than a few hours. Also the old android facebook version works fine for now.
New fix update changed the icon as well. Battery drain is noticeably gone but still drains quickly. Sprint Hero.
I still noticed the battery drain after the 1.3.1 update. Going to the Friends links force closes evrrytime for me as well. I uninstalled the updates. Won't update again until I see some people who can vouch that a future update works properly.
Nobody ask me but now my N1 get blue shiny trackball notifications for facebook
Hey guys.. There is a new app in Beta called "Pushee" that brings Facebook Push Notifications to ALL Android Versions. It will also have support for Twitter @'s and DM's via push notification in the next week. You can get the Beta here. http://pushee.atomicpineapple....
Yes... I am the developer, and yes this is a shameless plug.. but the fact is that Facebook has been screwing Android users and we are filling the gaps with TRUE Push Notifications.. and not just for chat.
We will also soon we adding more social media platforms to the app to provide a full push notification service.
Check it out!