It seems Facebook users are disappointed with its Android app. Constant complaints about performance and battery consumption have made its chief product officer, Chis Cox, to ask his staff to switch from their iPhones to Android until they resolve the issues.
Android Blogger Russel Holly is the first in a chain of techies who explored other options for accessing Facebook. His revelation was that life on Android was better without Facebook app. Following Holly, reddit user pbrandes_eth tested the app’s impact on the performance of an LG G4 only to confirm Holley’s arguments. Apps launched 15% faster on uninstalling Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Some other curious reddit users tested it on other devices and came up with similar results.
Keeping in mind Holley’s findings, I was keen on exploring ways to improve my smartphone’s battery life. Leaving the Facebook Messenger app installed, I swapped the Facebook app for an app called Metal, which acts as a wrapper for Facebook’s mobile site. I used the same notifications and accessed the same features as in Facebook. Surprisingly, my Huawei Nexus 6P had 20% more battery at the end of a day and this remained the average for every day I tried.
It is evident that Facebook app uses more power in the background than it needed inspite of it being not explicit about the same within Android’s built in battery statistics.
Other Android services like Android system and Android OS showed reduced battery consumption on uninstalling Facebook app. These services act as buffer for many apps to the outside world when running in the background. Though Facebook doesn’t look like a prominent power consumer, the figures are being displayed elsewhere in Android’s statistics.
Undoubtedly, uninstalling Facebook app saves both battery and speeds up Android phones. But there are no reasons to get disheartened as you have several substitutes that help you to access the mobile site within a wrapper, like Metal. You can also use Facebook within Chrome on an Android phone .With enabled notifications for actions, chats and other features from Facebook they offer an experience very similar to using an app.
Let Facebook launch a better Android app and until then ditching it could save you 20% of your battery life a day, and speed up your phone.
