Oculus recently rolled out an update that addresses problems relating to battery drain and overheating among a number of Samsung devices.
There have been more than a few of complaints relating to the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge, particularly the use of Oculus such device. The app has been adversely affecting the devices’ battery life as it causes the phones’ CPU to run very high. The same thing happens even if the app is not in use.
With this occurring, it also brings disruptions to other aps while preventing the device to switch to sleep mode.
Owners of the said Samsung mobile devices have been expressing their concerns on different online forums over the past days.
"What started it was YouTube app pausing video every 5-10 seconds. Which it will do under certain conditions of other heavy app use. After some investigative work noticed Oculus Home app was constantly dropping off the Battery Usage app list and refreshing. It appears it's closing and restarting," a user explained. "Even on a charger was losing 1% batt every 30 seconds."
As a result, using the Oculus app led to many users removing it from their phones. Some of them who followed this step found that the battery drain issue was fixed.
"I've removed all the Oculus and Gear VR apps, rebooted and my phone is back to normal. It actually might be better than normal. I've been sitting at 79% for about 10 mins of reddit browsing and my s7e seems cooler than it’s been in a long time,” a Reddit user acknowledged. “Now I'm wondering of these apps have been subtly draining my battery even before this issue happened. I guess I'll know better after a full day of use
Learning about the battery and overheating problem, Oculus has addressed the issue by releasing a new update.
"We recently pushed an update to the Oculus app that inadvertently caused some people to experience phone battery drain. The team has issued a fix that prompts people to update the Oculus software when they open the Oculus app. If they do not see the prompt, then the phone has been automatically updated and no further action is needed," Oculus told Gizmodo.
After being rolled out by Oculus, the fix can allow Galaxy Gear VR owners to explore and have fun with virtual reality using a Samsung device compatible with the virtual reality device without too much trouble.
Oculus’ issue with drained batteries and overheating comes only a few weeks after complaints about Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 and its battery explosion problem surfaced.