Facebook, connecting 1.44 Billion people worldwide. 1.24 Billion of those people are active users on a mobile device. An amazing feat for any industry. It’s plain and simple, Facebook is awesome, but it sure does drain your battery.
The problem: Facebook battery drain
Now, if you’re on Android, delete your Facebook app. Yes, you read it right, delete it. Don’t just get rid of it from your homepage or force stop it to save on power. Uninstall it. Immediately! Our beloved Facebook app is draining your battery and slowing down your phone by up to 15%. Not just the cheap plastic models either, I’m talking to you Samsung Galaxy S6, LG G4, Xperia Z5 users too. Chris Cox, Facebook’s chief product officer even made his staff switch from iOS to Android because the app was using so much power and Android can handle it better. Even still, Android still struggles.
One of the most anticipated specs of most flagship phones released every year is battery life and processing power. People want their phones running faster and smoother while also having long battery life and not having to recharge it 3 or 4 times a day. And it turns out all this time the manufacturers have been doing it right, to some extent anyway. Deleting the Facebook App can make your phone last up to 20% longer.
Now don’t get me wrong, if you’re like me and are using your phone for probably 75% of the day, you’re going to see reduced battery life. Cut the manufacturers some slack, the power coming from these phones are on another level to the computers that sent man into space back in the 60’s, so it’s going to drain your battery. But this handy trick can help make your phone last longer.
The reason behind this is app developers are putting so much into their apps. When the Facebook app first came out, it was supposed to be a condensed rendition of the desktop version, but who would have predicted that the vast majority of Facebook users would be using the app over desktop version on a daily basis. Facebook soon realised this and are trying to give its users as much accessibility on the app as possible – and to be fair they did. The Facebook app is easy and efficient to use, even for the older generation who weren’t raised using smart phones, but Facebook is every iPhone and Android users worst enemy.
Instead of being a compact version of the desktop version, it pretty much does everything you can do on the desktop. The result? Shite battery, and slow phones. Your phones aren’t performing to their full potential because of the Facebook and Messenger apps. I know, I know. It’s a nuisance going onto your internet browser and log in through Facebook this way. It’s not as fluid, nor is the interface as easy to use as the app, but I have the solution to battery drain
The solution
Introducing Metal. Metal is an app that acts as a web wrapper for Facebook. Compared to the Facebook app, it’s not nearly as heavy on your battery, your phone runs faster and you can access Facebook from any app with ease. Simply scroll down from the top of your screen and you can check messages, notifications, friend requests (or suggested friends so ye can still have a good creep) and scroll through your newsfeed. Instead of opening your Facebook app and going back and forth between apps and next thing you know you’ve 10 apps open draining your battery, you’re looking at your newsfeed on top of the app you are already viewing.
Metal is fluid and quick an just as easy to use as the Facebook app, if not easier and quicker. If you click into a link or a blog, it’s brings you to full screen just like it would if you opened it on the normal Facebook app. You can also go into the app as itself and scroll through it on the whole screen just like the normal Facebook app. It’s also compatible with Twitter so you can now save memory too as the two social networks work from the one app. Facebook is about 39MB, Twitter about 30MB, Metal is 3MB. That’s 69MB worth of apps condensed into 3MB, just 5% of the memory with all the functionality.
There are a couple of drawbacks, such as the messenger app being a little lighter with gifs, recordings, or the specialised emojis being limited to the full Facebook app. You have basically two choices, sacrifice your GIFs, or sacrifice your battery and smart phone performance. As Metal improves your battery by 20%, makes your phone 15% quicker and uses 95% less memory, this should be an easy choice. This app pretty much solves most of our issues we have with our expensive smartphones, if you’re not willing to give it a try, then there’s not much more that can be done to save your poor phone’s battery from an early death.
