OnePlus, and some Xiaomi phone users, have been complaining of notable battery drain on their handsets due to WhatsApp. Some OnePlus smartphone users took to Reddit to complain about high battery drain, while others did the same on OnePlus Forums or on Twitter. Everywhere, the complaints mention that their handset’s battery is being depleted quite fast and as per their device’s battery consumption details, WhatsApp seems to be the culprit. Version 2.19.308 of the popular chat app is said to be dramatically consuming battery on handsets as some users reported that the app used about 68 percent of their battery since they fully charged their device.
WhatsApp has not officially acknowledged if the new update of the messaging app is the cause of the battery drain problem. However, if you are facing a similar issue, here are some simple steps you can take to resolve it. While updating WhatsApp from the Play Store you should update the app to a version higher than 2.19.308, which should fix the issue, we checked to find that there was no update available at the time of writing this article. You should check nonetheless and update the app if a newer patch is available.
In case you are already on version 2.19.308 of the app, perform a backup and uninstall the app to perform a downgrade. You can then download the V2.19.291 version of the app from here and sideload it. In case the new WhatsApp version was the culprit draining your device’s battery, downgrading it to the previous version should solve the problem.
In other WhatsApp news, the app finally received the update that enables fingerprint authentication mechanism. One can now lock the app via the fingerprint authentication mechanism so that only they can access the app. The option is available in the apps’ settings and you can read more about it here.