Facebook Messenger

Terrible, terrible, terrible. Facebook Messenger is slow and a battery hog. On my Xperia XZ1 Compact, it was sometimes responsible for almost 50% of my battery drain – even if I never opened the app on that day, and didn't get any messages. The same was the case on my three previous Android phones as well. Just to clarify once more: I was able to almost double the battery life of all of my smartphones by simply uninstalling Facebook Messenger. Who knows what the heck this thing is doing in the background. When people complain to me about their phone's battery life, the first two questions I ask them are "are location services turned on?" and "do you have Facebook Messenger installed?". Many people have thanked me for the latter question.

Not to mention that Facebook Messenger is yet another messaging app that tries to be the only messenger app you need on your phone. How many of those are there at this point? And Facebook's attempt was so late to the game that there's no excuse.

Of course, the worst thing is that Facebook try to shove this Messenger down your throat like their entire revenue depended on it. The main Facebook app was perfectly able to support messaging your friends, until it was deliberately disabled and removed once Messenger was introduced. Of course you can still see that someone wrote to you, it's just that instead of showing you the content, all it will do is send you to the App Store page of Messenger.

They have even sunk as low as to try and detect if you are visiting the Facebook website from a mobile phone, and hide your messages from you if you are. As of now, the "Show desktop version" option of most mobile browsers still works to regain access to your messages. Any bets on when they lock that down, too?

I'm not usually part of the Facebook-bashing mob, but I get very upset when companies behave like this and keep trying to find new ways to piss off their customers. Facebook, you can stick your Messenger where the sun doesn't shine.

I hope no one forgot how Facebook virtually enforced this application upon mobile Facebook users. No amount of complaining and backlash would make them change their minds. I remember when the application had 1 star on the App Store. That was 2? 3? years ago. I checked it just now, and it's at a whopping 4.5 stars. Have we become complacent? I don't know if Facebook ever reversed that decision to enforce using Messenger on mobile.

For what it's worth, Messenger does have pretty good performance when using the application. There might have been a few bugs here and there, but I don't recall anything that severely destroyed the usability of this application. (After reading some other reviews on the App Store, it appears I may have been lucky with my experience; others had lots of issues.)

Now, the battery usage...oh, boy, the battery usage. I never realized just how much battery it was using in the background until I uninstalled it recently. My phone went from going down to 50% in a day without any usage to 90% in a day without any usage. We can see how much Messenger is pinging the servers to check for new messages. It's a real battery drain.

And remember, it's Facebook we're talking about here. They want your data, and desperately so. It's how they make most of their money. I'm glad I never connected my phone number to Messenger; Facebook would have made off with all my contacts. Well, who knows. They might even have it now, without my consent. Can't prove or disprove it, since the app is proprietary.

It bothers me how many people use Messenger because "everyone else is using it", and that includes my own circle of friends. Virtually all of them have a Facebook account. Speaking to a few of them revealed that some simply didn't care about their privacy. I don't like to say this, but Messenger may well be a manifestation of the ignorance and uncaring attitude of people with regards to technology: "if it works, I am happy. No need to worry about what's going on below what I can see."

So, to summarize:

PROS:

• Decent performance

CONS:

• Huge battery drain
• Privacy issues because Facebook
• (as far as I know) enforced usage of the application if you want to chat with others on mobile

Annoying is that now you have to keep all these facebook apps instead to have everything in one box.

They read every message you receive and send
Not open source

No user privacy (app's uploading your contact list to Facebook servers), phone number-issued accounts doesn't work unless all your friends allow sending their contacts, which means you need a Facebook account, ads included, no public API for alternative apps