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Looks like Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Pages Manager Apps may be bad for your smartphone’s health.

How to stop Facebook and Messenger from draining your battery (2)

A dual study conducted by the UK Guardian Newspaper, found that these Apps severely reduce the following on your Google Android smartphone or Apple iPhone:

  • 20% reduction in the battery life for Google Android
  • 15% reduction in the battery life for Apple iPhone
  • 500GB Internal Storage when installed (Facebook)

The performance for both smartphones in terms of speeds of execution of other tasks was also severely reduced. This study backs up findings by Reddit user pbrandes_eth who in January 2016 discovered that uninstalling these Apps significantly speeds up your Google Android smartphone or Apple iPhone.

I’ve actually seen this on smartphones that my friends own in the community of Swallowfield here in Kingston, Jamaica, so I know that this study is reflecting a global truth. So what exactly is the problem with these Apps that’s causing these problems?

Facebook Apps and your smartphone – Bloated Apps use too much RAM and battery power

It comes down to two main problems:

  • Memory consumption
  • Wake/lock commands
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Facebook, Facebook Messenger and Pages Manager Apps consumes large amounts of RAM as well as use up large amounts of smartphone Internal Memory. In fact, combined, these Apps account for 50% of the memory consumption, while other Apps use 5-10x less memory.

How to stop Facebook and Messenger from draining your battery (1)

Also the Facebook App accounts for some 500 MB of storage space alone, which is considerable especially if you have a budget Smartphone such as the Digicel DL910, which only has 1GB of RAM as noted in Digicel DL910 – For the average smartphone user.

So it would stand to reason that uninstalling the Facebook, Messenger and its Pages Manager Apps frees up not only RAM but loads of storage space. Still, even if you get an SD Card to increase your storage by 32GB, you still will have to contend with slower operation of your smartphone.

The reasons for this slow down caused by the Facebook, Messenger and its Pages Manager Apps is due to the Apps continuously checking for updates.

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Android and iOS has limited this function of most Apps, but Facebook deliberately labels all of its requests for access to it servers as critical. This triggers the Wake/lock commands that awakens the Baseband Processor more than is needed, using up Data from your Data plan in Android and considerably more Battery power than normal.

So how do you fix this?

Facebook Zero to the rescue – Websites more efficient as Facebook Developers sloppy

The best fix is to uninstall these Facebook, Facebook Messenger and its Pages Manager Apps.

Then use Facebook Zero as it consumes no battery life when not in use and about 8MB of memory. The website has all of the functionality of the App once you have good Internet speeds using a fairly large smartphone with a good browser.

Also a mass exodus from Facebook Apps could force Facebook’s Developers to completely revamp the way in which Facebook’s Apps function as it relates to touching base with their servers needlessly for updates.

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