
Facebook has apologized for a glitch that engaged silent audio on mobile platforms, draining devices of their battery power in a matter of hours.
Facebook has some explaining to do. A recent bug on its mobile application has prompted users to write in complaining of a dramatically shortened battery life while running the application on their iPhones. According to a report from TechCrunch, Facebook engineering manager Ari Grant recently made a post explaining that the battery issues were caused by a number of glitches, including one that used up extra CPU cycles.
Facebook announced that the glitches were fixed today, and iOS users should download the newly updated version of the application in order to fix the battery life problem.
Facebook was also found to be running a silent stream of audio in the background, which engaged the iPhone’s speakers and internal sound chip. Grant explains that this bug was unintentional, and was not used to keep the app running even after it had been shut down. It was just an unfortunate byproduct of the initial bug.
Apps have used background audio to stay running on a mobile device for quite some time. A popular cloud storage service used to play silent audio to keep their app open so that photos could be automatically stored, but has subsequently switched to a method that engages the phone’s location services instead.
Other apps have used the audio trick to stay open while content or advertisements load, files upload or download, or news feeds update. It has led to the development of auto-playing videos, and despite the fact that Apple doesn’t want developers to use the trick, it actually has some practical uses.
Grant maintains that the mix-up is no more than a simple glitch, and has ben completely repaired. Facebook hasn’t come out and said it, but it is very likely that the company was trying to find away around a roadblock set up by Apple’s developers.
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