Question: Article:
Testing reveals Facebook iOS app drains battery life, even when it isn’t being used, and that using Safari instead will make an iPhone last longer 
  
 Facebook is one of the most downloaded apps on iOS but it has long been cited as a cause of fast-draining iPhone batteries. Last year it was accused of using background tricks to stay active even when it wasn’t being used. Facebook admitted bugs existed, and fixed them, but questions of the app’s impact on battery life remained. 
  
 Similar concerns about Facebook’s Android app led to the discovery that deleting the app saves up to 20% of a phone’s battery. After that revelation, I set about seeing if the same was true for iPhone users. I discovered that uninstalling Facebook’s iOS app and switching to Safari can save up to 15% of iPhone battery life. 
  
  
  
  
  
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest An alternative to uninstalling Facebook is using the hump from Apple’s Smart Battery case. Photograph: Apple 
  
 Using an iPhone 6S Plus for a week without the main Facebook app installed, I recorded the battery life at 10.30pm each day for a week comparing it to a daily average taken from a week with the app. I charged the phone overnight, taking it off the charger at 7.30am, and used it normally. I accessed Facebook for the same amount of time, and for the same purposes, using the social network’s excellent mobile site within Safari, as I had done using the app. I also left the Facebook Messenger app installed. 
  
 On average I had 15% more battery left by 10.30pm each day. I had also saved space, because at the point I had deleted the Facebook app it had consumed around 500MB in total combining the 111MB of the app itself and its cache on the iPhone. 
  
 To make sure that this wasn’t an isolated incident, I also recruited several other Facebook-using iPhone owners to conduct a similar test. They all found similar results, with increased battery life when using Facebook in Safari having uninstalled the main Facebook iOS app. 
  
 Facebook Twitter Pinterest Spot the difference: one is the Facebook app, the other the Facebook mobile site. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian 
  
 Using Facebook in Safari was almost as good as the app. You can even place a shortcut to Facebook in Safari on the homescreen that looks almost identical to the app’s icon (the white is a little less bright but you need eagle eyes to see). The only restriction was the Share-to function, which does not exist for websites, meaning that to share photos I had to manually hit the “post photos” button on the mobile site. 
  
 Features of the app, such as Instant Articles, are also not available. Tapping a link on the Facebook mobile site opens a new Safari tab. 
  
 The results will vary for the smaller iPhone 6S, as it has a smaller battery and shorter battery life overall, but judging by the 6S Plus experience, removing the Facebook app in preference of using the social network in Safari will extend the battery life of any iPhone. 
  
 A Facebook spokesperson said the company was investigating the matter. ||||| Facebook’s Android app negatively impacts performance and battery life, even when it’s only running in the background, users find 
  
 Facebook does not have the greatest track record with its Android app. Users have long complained about performance issues and it sucking up battery and last year Facebook’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, took the unusual step of making his staff ditch their iPhones and move to Android until they sorted out the issues. 
  
  
  
 But the problems have remained, and recently they led the Android blogger Russell Holly to dump the app, starting a chain reaction which revealed something rather interesting about the app’s performance. Prompted by Holly’s revelation that life on Android was better without Facebook’s app, Reddit user pbrandes_eth tested the app’s impact on the performance of an LG G4. 
  
 They found that when the Facebook and Facebook Messenger apps were uninstalled, other apps on the smartphone launched 15% faster. They tested 15 separate apps, and documented the findings, leading other reddit users to test other devices. They found similar results when testing for app loading performance. 
  
 After reading Holly’s piece, I had also decided to explore other options for accessing Facebook, to see if, rather than app loading, I could improve my smartphone’s battery life. 
  
  
  
 I left the Facebook Messenger app installed, but swapped the Facebook app for an app called Metal, which acts as a wrapper for Facebook’s mobile site. Over the course of a day my Huawei Nexus 6P had 20% more battery. This was true on average for every day for the week tried. 
  
 In Metal I was using the same notifications and accessing the same features as I had just a week earlier through the Facebook app, so why the difference? 
  
 Despite the Facebook app not showing up as using a significant amount of power within Android’s built-in battery statistics, it was evidently consuming more power in the background than it needed to. 
  
 It turned out other Android services including Android system and Android OS showed reduced battery consumption when the Facebook app was uninstalled. Those services act as a buffer for many apps to the outside world when running in the background. So while Facebook didn’t look like it was using that much power, it was actually just being displayed elsewhere in Android’s statistics. 
  
 So, uninstalling the Facebook app saves both battery and speeds up Android phones, it seems. Obviously, it may be less convenient not to have the apps, but there are several substitutes that allow you to access the mobile site within a wrapper, like Metal that I used. 
  
 Alternatively, you can simply use Facebook within Chrome on an Android phone: recent updates have enabled notifications for actions, chats and other features from Facebook even in the background, meaning the experience is very similar to using an app. 
  
 Either way, until Facebook improves its Android app, ditching it could save you 20% of your battery life a day, and speed up your phone. 
  
 A Facebook spokesperson said: “We have heard reports of some people experiencing speed issues stemming from our Android app. We are looking into this and will keep you posted. We are committed to continuing to improve these issues.” 
  
 The company made no mention of battery life issues, however. |||||Summary:

Answer: – Users of the Facebook mobile app have long complained that it drains smartphone battery life, even when it's not being used, and now it's been revealed just how true that is. Guardian journalist Samuel Gibbs recently conducted his own experiment and found that after deleting the Facebook app and instead using the Safari browser to access Facebook, his iPhone had, on average, 15% more battery life available at the end of each day. Gibbs made sure to use Facebook on Safari for the same activities and the same amount of time each day, and he had others repeat the experiment—they all got similar results. Bonus: Gibbs also had more storage available, since the Facebook app had been using about 500MB. Gibbs carried out his experiment after a similar one by Android users. As the Guardian reported last week, bloggers and Reddit users found that after uninstalling the Facebook app on Android devices, other apps loaded more quickly. Gibbs himself experimented with an Android smartphone and found that deleting the Facebook app, in that case, saved 20% of the battery life on average each day. How about user experience? In the case of the iPhone, "Using Facebook in Safari was almost as good as the app," Gibbs writes, though some features aren't available. On an Android device, you can access Facebook via Chrome or, as Gibbs did, try a "wrapper" app for the Facebook mobile site, like Metal.