17 ms·

VLC is blacklisting recent Huawei devices to combat negative app reviews

115 points by Wingman4l7 8y ago

edf13 8y ago
Blacklisting or just not supporting those device types and therefore preventing users using it?
- unsignedint 8y ago
  Tweet says users can download apk so it's just they can't get it off Google Play. Users basically will get a message it's not compatible with their device hence they can't review the app.
  - shakna 8y ago
    Which sounds exactly like 'We won't support that device'. You can work around it, but you're on your own if anything goes wrong.
    - unsignedint 8y ago
      Yeah, it's a blacklist for "general public" but those adventurous or ones who can support themselves can try. Quite modest approach I think.
    - loeg 8y ago
      It does not sound like "therefore preventing users using it," though.
      - shakna 8y ago
        Yep. Unsupported, but not 'blacklisted'.
- Fradow 8y ago
  It is a blacklist at the Google Play level, not at the apk level. The devices are supported, as evidenced by the advice to download the apk directly. There are several ways to blacklist device: - via Google Play, you have a list of all the device your apk is supposed to support. You can blacklist some of them, which won't be able to install the app, despite being otherwise supported - at the apk level (Android Manifest), by requiring hardware capability (for example, a camera, a phone, screen size ...) but not by specific model - obviously, you can detect the model after install and do a custom blacklist that prevent the user from actually using the app VLC only used the first method, as a way to avoid those models from reviewing the app, because they were leaving disproportionate negative reviews. That's a very sensible move if you ask me.
1996 8y ago
I do not understand why the west hates Huawei so much
- oulu2006 8y ago
  Did you read the article?
  - 1996 8y ago
    I did. I love Huawei phone because they do not let programs eat cpu in the background - I like windows phone who did the same I see the article and the tweet that caused it as a cheap shot against Huawei, motivated by some irrational anger that affects even free software developers.
    - whytookay 8y ago
      I have no idea how this can be framed as a slight against Huawei. Huawei decided to have aggressive battery management (which to many is a good thing) to the detriment of apps that need to continue to run in the background. If this is causing a significant loss of rating for the app, they are well within their rights to blacklist installs from the play store for those devices. Those users can still install the app via the APK (which is admittedly a poorer experience). Edit: Also I'm not sure where your'e getting the "West hates Huawei so much" vibe from. They've done a few things that have been unpopular from the POV of the Android community at large, such as no longer allowing unlocking of their devices this week, but I would say their bigger issue in the West is that they are simply not marketed much.
      - 1996 8y ago
        You are not sure where I am getting that the west hates Huawei?? really? Here are some random links. https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/3/17532696/sprint-t-mobile-china-huawei-softbank-merger-trump-scrutiny https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/3/17532696/sprint-t-mobile-c... https://www.quora.com/Did-Trump-sign-an-act-to-ban-Huawei-phones-from-America https://www.quora.com/Did-Trump-sign-an-act-to-ban-Huawei-ph... https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/4g-lte/will-trump-make-a-deal-with-huawei/a/d-id/743761 https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/4g-lte/will-trump-make-a...
xster 8y ago
This is on iOS but their app definitely went downhill pretty severely in the past year. If any sort of bluetooth or background playback is involved, the previous playback position will almost always be lost. Video/audio in a playlist skips and don't play sequentially. Reordering items manually will have their order re-scrambled as soon as you start scrolling the item list in the playlist. Playing an item to completion even in foreground will show a random amount left on this item when you moved onto another item. It's hard to say Huawei is exclusively to blame when their primary video playing features (including background playback) is already so buggy.
- protomyth 8y ago
  Also on iOS, and I wonder if anyone else has experienced a weird bug. Open VLC, make sure it’s showing your videos as a grid, then drop your iPad about 3 feet onto a bed or other very soft surface (I am not responsible for you not picking a soft enough landing area). VLC gives me the “Report a bug” dialog box.
  - MarkyC4 8y ago
    This is probably a shake to report a bug feature (Android users are probably more used to this, I remember Google Maps on Android having this feature)
    - protomyth 8y ago
      Is there some reason to implement it on iOS? It also is really damn touchy.
      - shakna 8y ago
        Smaller codebase? I expect the iOS and Android branches share a fairly decent amount of code.
  - grahamburger 8y ago
    This is a pretty common pattern on Android. Sometimes accompanied by a message like "You seem to be shaking the device in frustration, report a bug?"
zamadatix 8y ago
I'm not sure how much of it was about the 1 star reviews as much as it was anger at Huawei's "optimization".
r3vrse 8y ago
I work in a role where a bunch of Huawei devices have been deployed to non-technical end users for a particular business purpose (against my advice). This doesn't surprise me in the slightest -- the overzealous and frankly capricious changes in their Android firmware are ridiculous and difficult to mitigate. Sure, let's issue a comm. that says "everyone change this setting so your device will work properly". What level of adoption can be expected from that? (hint: not much) The scenario listed here is exactly why we need to promote and support efforts toward open firmware for Android devices, or at the very least, don't compensate vendors/manufacturers that use the Android platform to slather crap across an OS that works fine without all the additional and superfluous BS.
Hasknewbie 8y ago
Ha, I had the same problem on a Lenovo phone, except I knew it was not a VLC issue because the process-kill would happen with any app I would leave running in the background. The most annoying part was that even after tweaking the battery/power settings this would still happen. Lesson learnt, don't buy Lenovo.
wemdyjreichert 8y ago
Another clickbaity title not giving the whole story... "Huawei killing apps; devs blamed" would have been better. If a phone was crashing your apps and users blamed you (and rated your app as such), what would you do?
- williamscales 8y ago
  I trust the VLC team so I gave them the benefit of the doubt before even clicking, I completely agree. The title should reflect that this is in response to Huawei firmware changes. I think the only other reasonable thing that could be done is automatically responding to the one star reviews. Maybe work with Google to remove the reviews, but these things take time and may not work. I have a hard time finding a problem with what the devs have done here.
- soylentcola 8y ago
  Also, I believe developers on the Play Store can set flags for device compatibility anyway, no? Or is that limited to specs and OS version? It makes sense that if an application is known to not work properly on a given device, it might throw the "not compatible with your device" message on the app listing. The fact that they still offer it as a direct download shows that they aren't solely trying to stop people from using it, but rather they know of the issues and don't want to claim full compatibility.
- bamboo_7 8y ago
  Break news! Team uses filtering feature of Play Store to avoid installing app on devices where it doesn't work!
scarface74 8y ago
How much of this should be blamed on Google? iOS only allows certain types of apps to run in the background unfettered - audio, navigation, Bluetooth communications apps (like the Pebble) and third party calling apps. Other types of apps can be periodically awakened by the OS (background app refresh), but the OS decides how often they can be awaken based on the frequency of interaction and a few other heuristics. In low power mode, apps that do background app refresh don’t get CPU time(?) and you can control which apps allowed to run in the background. This allows the OS to distinguish between apps that always need to work in the background and those that don’t. The only drawback is server type apps. While VLC will keep playing audio in the background, I don’t believe the http server that allows you to copy media over a web interface to your phone will work over an extended period of time unless you’re playing audio at the same time.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- basch 8y ago
  Android 8 adopted this style of backgrounding a year ago. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/android-8-0-oreo-thoroughly-reviewed/9/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/android-8-0-oreo-tho...
  - scarface74 8y ago
    The issue with Android, is that Google never breaks backwards compatibility. Android also has improved security permissions but it’s voluntary for apps to adopt it.
    - jbk 8y ago
      VLC follows all Google recommendations, including for Oreo 8 compatibility. We rewrote our background service exactly for that.
      - scarface74 8y ago
lovelearning 8y ago
Rather than blacklist, I think a better approach is for VLC app to inform Huawei users about its quirky behavior on first run after installation and after every update. That way, Huawei users are unlikely to take the trouble of leaving a low rating for an app, and are better informed to choose a device next time. If background audio is something you can't do without, don't choose Huawei - that should be the messaging. That can help kick the company too into improving its firmware. On a different - but related note - Huawei recently announced that they won't provide bootloader unlocking anymore for any device[1]. Although I own an Honor and like its hardware and software, I think Huawei is setting itself up to become an increasingly "bad player" in the device space in future. I'm wary of buying a Huawei again. [1]: https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-stop-providing-bootloader-unlock-codes/ https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-stop-providing-bootloa...
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Could just as easily be counter productive. Some user who's just spent a few hundred on a new Huawei installs VLC and all their other old apps. VLC tells them their choice will lead to strange behaviour. User leaves 1 star review that VLC told them their new phone was crap. Users barely read error messages and dialogues so there's no scope for any nuance in explaining and informing. Blocking seems the only rational approach to take. Those who can understand sideloading can likely decide if they want VLC warts and all on their Huawei.
  - eropple 8y ago
    You aren't kidding. Users are shitty and capricious in the mobile space (sometimes everywhere, but very frequently the mobile space). I've had users leave one-star reviews for my mobile app--which controls OBS, a video mixer--with the reason "it works for 20 minutes [ed.: there is a very visible timer the entire time] and then stops [ed.: it goes readonly, it doesn't kill a stream or recording] and asks you to pay [ed.: five whole dollars]."
_bxg1 8y ago
Wow, what a terrible strategy for saving battery. Let's just send our customers back to 2009, when you had to keep your Pandora app open so your music wouldn't stop. Making a mental note to never buy a Huawei.
- HNNewer 8y ago
  it's not Huawei, it's the dev: YouTube app cannot play videos in background anymore, even on Apple.
- Wingman4l7 8y ago
  Especially ridiculous considering the advancements in fast chargers that we have now for newer phones.
dz0ny 8y ago
I am observing the same "killing" of background service for Signal app too. Basically any app with a long-running session which you don't whitelist. And it seems that it whitelist the Spotify for example on its own. I don't think the blocking install by VLC team is the right way, communicating the issue to a user is a much more reasonable way. Look at Garmin Connect app, which had the same issue but they implemented notification and how-to disable management.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  That is normal. An application that requires the background "foreground" service to run is obligated to display a notification and call an Android foreground service API in the service itself. Unless it is lower target SDK than 23 (number may be wrong).
yAnonymous 8y ago
I completely agree with aggressive background killing, because too many apps are abusing their permissions and try every trick in the book to siphon user data at all times. That being said, killing an app that is actively playing audio is not the best idea and an open source app with 100 million installs should probably be whitelisted anyway.
verrecken 8y ago
Just code it right ? I don't find those negative reviews on other background music players like spotify, so I imply that they work fine on those devices. I don't think they pushed an update just for two devices, I think it just worked with huaweis background killing. If VLC is not working on those devices, they deserve the negative reviews.
- kec 8y ago
  or huawei has a whitelist of apps not to mess around with, and spotify is on it but vlc isn't.
konraditurbe 8y ago
Android 8 has doze but it's not a problem for VLC: Android 8 Doze: apps can be blacklisted so that they don't get killed, API: https://stackoverflow.com/a/42651399/3422837 https://stackoverflow.com/a/42651399/3422837 Huawei adds a very aggressive background app killer, this means that apps like VLC and WhatsApp don't work in background. I have a low end Huawei device for testing purposes (hint hint), there is a setting to whitelist apps from huawei's appkiller but they get killed anyway.

115 points by Wingman4l7 8y ago

edf13 8y ago

Blacklisting or just not supporting those device types and therefore preventing users using it?

unsignedint 8y ago
Tweet says users can download apk so it's just they can't get it off Google Play. Users basically will get a message it's not compatible with their device hence they can't review the app.
- shakna 8y ago
  Which sounds exactly like 'We won't support that device'. You can work around it, but you're on your own if anything goes wrong.
  - unsignedint 8y ago
    Yeah, it's a blacklist for "general public" but those adventurous or ones who can support themselves can try. Quite modest approach I think.
  - loeg 8y ago
    It does not sound like "therefore preventing users using it," though.
    - shakna 8y ago
      Yep. Unsupported, but not 'blacklisted'.
Fradow 8y ago
It is a blacklist at the Google Play level, not at the apk level. The devices are supported, as evidenced by the advice to download the apk directly. There are several ways to blacklist device: - via Google Play, you have a list of all the device your apk is supposed to support. You can blacklist some of them, which won't be able to install the app, despite being otherwise supported - at the apk level (Android Manifest), by requiring hardware capability (for example, a camera, a phone, screen size ...) but not by specific model - obviously, you can detect the model after install and do a custom blacklist that prevent the user from actually using the app VLC only used the first method, as a way to avoid those models from reviewing the app, because they were leaving disproportionate negative reviews. That's a very sensible move if you ask me.

1996 8y ago

I do not understand why the west hates Huawei so much

oulu2006 8y ago
Did you read the article?
- 1996 8y ago
  I did. I love Huawei phone because they do not let programs eat cpu in the background - I like windows phone who did the same I see the article and the tweet that caused it as a cheap shot against Huawei, motivated by some irrational anger that affects even free software developers.
  - whytookay 8y ago
    I have no idea how this can be framed as a slight against Huawei. Huawei decided to have aggressive battery management (which to many is a good thing) to the detriment of apps that need to continue to run in the background. If this is causing a significant loss of rating for the app, they are well within their rights to blacklist installs from the play store for those devices. Those users can still install the app via the APK (which is admittedly a poorer experience). Edit: Also I'm not sure where your'e getting the "West hates Huawei so much" vibe from. They've done a few things that have been unpopular from the POV of the Android community at large, such as no longer allowing unlocking of their devices this week, but I would say their bigger issue in the West is that they are simply not marketed much.
    - 1996 8y ago
      You are not sure where I am getting that the west hates Huawei?? really? Here are some random links. https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/3/17532696/sprint-t-mobile-china-huawei-softbank-merger-trump-scrutiny https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/3/17532696/sprint-t-mobile-c... https://www.quora.com/Did-Trump-sign-an-act-to-ban-Huawei-phones-from-America https://www.quora.com/Did-Trump-sign-an-act-to-ban-Huawei-ph... https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/4g-lte/will-trump-make-a-deal-with-huawei/a/d-id/743761 https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/4g-lte/will-trump-make-a...

xster 8y ago

This is on iOS but their app definitely went downhill pretty severely in the past year. If any sort of bluetooth or background playback is involved, the previous playback position will almost always be lost. Video/audio in a playlist skips and don't play sequentially. Reordering items manually will have their order re-scrambled as soon as you start scrolling the item list in the playlist. Playing an item to completion even in foreground will show a random amount left on this item when you moved onto another item. It's hard to say Huawei is exclusively to blame when their primary video playing features (including background playback) is already so buggy.

protomyth 8y ago
Also on iOS, and I wonder if anyone else has experienced a weird bug. Open VLC, make sure it’s showing your videos as a grid, then drop your iPad about 3 feet onto a bed or other very soft surface (I am not responsible for you not picking a soft enough landing area). VLC gives me the “Report a bug” dialog box.
- MarkyC4 8y ago
  This is probably a shake to report a bug feature (Android users are probably more used to this, I remember Google Maps on Android having this feature)
  - protomyth 8y ago
    Is there some reason to implement it on iOS? It also is really damn touchy.
    - shakna 8y ago
      Smaller codebase? I expect the iOS and Android branches share a fairly decent amount of code.
- grahamburger 8y ago
  This is a pretty common pattern on Android. Sometimes accompanied by a message like "You seem to be shaking the device in frustration, report a bug?"

zamadatix 8y ago

I'm not sure how much of it was about the 1 star reviews as much as it was anger at Huawei's "optimization".

r3vrse 8y ago

I work in a role where a bunch of Huawei devices have been deployed to non-technical end users for a particular business purpose (against my advice). This doesn't surprise me in the slightest -- the overzealous and frankly capricious changes in their Android firmware are ridiculous and difficult to mitigate. Sure, let's issue a comm. that says "everyone change this setting so your device will work properly". What level of adoption can be expected from that? (hint: not much) The scenario listed here is exactly why we need to promote and support efforts toward open firmware for Android devices, or at the very least, don't compensate vendors/manufacturers that use the Android platform to slather crap across an OS that works fine without all the additional and superfluous BS.

Hasknewbie 8y ago

Ha, I had the same problem on a Lenovo phone, except I knew it was not a VLC issue because the process-kill would happen with any app I would leave running in the background. The most annoying part was that even after tweaking the battery/power settings this would still happen. Lesson learnt, don't buy Lenovo.

wemdyjreichert 8y ago

Another clickbaity title not giving the whole story... "Huawei killing apps; devs blamed" would have been better. If a phone was crashing your apps and users blamed you (and rated your app as such), what would you do?

williamscales 8y ago
I trust the VLC team so I gave them the benefit of the doubt before even clicking, I completely agree. The title should reflect that this is in response to Huawei firmware changes. I think the only other reasonable thing that could be done is automatically responding to the one star reviews. Maybe work with Google to remove the reviews, but these things take time and may not work. I have a hard time finding a problem with what the devs have done here.
soylentcola 8y ago
Also, I believe developers on the Play Store can set flags for device compatibility anyway, no? Or is that limited to specs and OS version? It makes sense that if an application is known to not work properly on a given device, it might throw the "not compatible with your device" message on the app listing. The fact that they still offer it as a direct download shows that they aren't solely trying to stop people from using it, but rather they know of the issues and don't want to claim full compatibility.
bamboo_7 8y ago
Break news! Team uses filtering feature of Play Store to avoid installing app on devices where it doesn't work!

scarface74 8y ago

How much of this should be blamed on Google? iOS only allows certain types of apps to run in the background unfettered - audio, navigation, Bluetooth communications apps (like the Pebble) and third party calling apps. Other types of apps can be periodically awakened by the OS (background app refresh), but the OS decides how often they can be awaken based on the frequency of interaction and a few other heuristics. In low power mode, apps that do background app refresh don’t get CPU time(?) and you can control which apps allowed to run in the background. This allows the OS to distinguish between apps that always need to work in the background and those that don’t. The only drawback is server type apps. While VLC will keep playing audio in the background, I don’t believe the http server that allows you to copy media over a web interface to your phone will work over an extended period of time unless you’re playing audio at the same time.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
basch 8y ago
Android 8 adopted this style of backgrounding a year ago. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/android-8-0-oreo-thoroughly-reviewed/9/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/android-8-0-oreo-tho...
- scarface74 8y ago
  The issue with Android, is that Google never breaks backwards compatibility. Android also has improved security permissions but it’s voluntary for apps to adopt it.
  - jbk 8y ago
    VLC follows all Google recommendations, including for Oreo 8 compatibility. We rewrote our background service exactly for that.
    - scarface74 8y ago

lovelearning 8y ago

Rather than blacklist, I think a better approach is for VLC app to inform Huawei users about its quirky behavior on first run after installation and after every update. That way, Huawei users are unlikely to take the trouble of leaving a low rating for an app, and are better informed to choose a device next time. If background audio is something you can't do without, don't choose Huawei - that should be the messaging. That can help kick the company too into improving its firmware. On a different - but related note - Huawei recently announced that they won't provide bootloader unlocking anymore for any device[1]. Although I own an Honor and like its hardware and software, I think Huawei is setting itself up to become an increasingly "bad player" in the device space in future. I'm wary of buying a Huawei again. [1]: https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-stop-providing-bootloader-unlock-codes/ https://www.xda-developers.com/huawei-stop-providing-bootloa...

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Could just as easily be counter productive. Some user who's just spent a few hundred on a new Huawei installs VLC and all their other old apps. VLC tells them their choice will lead to strange behaviour. User leaves 1 star review that VLC told them their new phone was crap. Users barely read error messages and dialogues so there's no scope for any nuance in explaining and informing. Blocking seems the only rational approach to take. Those who can understand sideloading can likely decide if they want VLC warts and all on their Huawei.
- eropple 8y ago
  You aren't kidding. Users are shitty and capricious in the mobile space (sometimes everywhere, but very frequently the mobile space). I've had users leave one-star reviews for my mobile app--which controls OBS, a video mixer--with the reason "it works for 20 minutes [ed.: there is a very visible timer the entire time] and then stops [ed.: it goes readonly, it doesn't kill a stream or recording] and asks you to pay [ed.: five whole dollars]."

_bxg1 8y ago

Wow, what a terrible strategy for saving battery. Let's just send our customers back to 2009, when you had to keep your Pandora app open so your music wouldn't stop. Making a mental note to never buy a Huawei.

HNNewer 8y ago
it's not Huawei, it's the dev: YouTube app cannot play videos in background anymore, even on Apple.
Wingman4l7 8y ago
Especially ridiculous considering the advancements in fast chargers that we have now for newer phones.

dz0ny 8y ago

I am observing the same "killing" of background service for Signal app too. Basically any app with a long-running session which you don't whitelist. And it seems that it whitelist the Spotify for example on its own. I don't think the blocking install by VLC team is the right way, communicating the issue to a user is a much more reasonable way. Look at Garmin Connect app, which had the same issue but they implemented notification and how-to disable management.

AstralStorm 8y ago
That is normal. An application that requires the background "foreground" service to run is obligated to display a notification and call an Android foreground service API in the service itself. Unless it is lower target SDK than 23 (number may be wrong).

yAnonymous 8y ago

I completely agree with aggressive background killing, because too many apps are abusing their permissions and try every trick in the book to siphon user data at all times. That being said, killing an app that is actively playing audio is not the best idea and an open source app with 100 million installs should probably be whitelisted anyway.

verrecken 8y ago

Just code it right ? I don't find those negative reviews on other background music players like spotify, so I imply that they work fine on those devices. I don't think they pushed an update just for two devices, I think it just worked with huaweis background killing. If VLC is not working on those devices, they deserve the negative reviews.

kec 8y ago
or huawei has a whitelist of apps not to mess around with, and spotify is on it but vlc isn't.

konraditurbe 8y ago

Android 8 has doze but it's not a problem for VLC: Android 8 Doze: apps can be blacklisted so that they don't get killed, API: https://stackoverflow.com/a/42651399/3422837 https://stackoverflow.com/a/42651399/3422837 Huawei adds a very aggressive background app killer, this means that apps like VLC and WhatsApp don't work in background. I have a low end Huawei device for testing purposes (hint hint), there is a setting to whitelist apps from huawei's appkiller but they get killed anyway.