As Apple works away at its next iPhone many are asking for extended battery life because if you're the type of person that perpetually has a low battery and carries around two portable chargers with you there's never enough battery life. If anyone even mildly identifies with the aforementioned iPhone woes they'll be elated to find out there's a quick fix to get some extra juice out of their phone: deleting the Facebook app.
After hearing that Android users whom got rid of the Facebook app saved up to 20 percent of battery life The Guardian's Samuel Gibbs set out to investigate if the same happened on iPhone. Gibbs tested the effects on the battery using the installed app and using Facebook mobile via Safari on the iPhone 6S Plus. Gibbs charged the phone overnight and used it for the same amount of time when testing out both ways then recording the battery life each night at 10:30 p.m. wrote Gibbs.
Gibbs concluded: "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."
Gibbs also told other people to do it, earning the same results. Gibbs recommends using Facebook on Safari instead. For those who absolutely can't live without the Facebook app here's some of the differences you'd see accessing it on Safari: "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."
Although Gibbs didn't test an iPhone 6 Gibbs speculates getting rid of the Facebook app should more or less have the same results. More battery life, more space, and less time spent on social media? Sounds like a win-win.
