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For me this problem is very real. For example I got my mother a Pocofone F1 (by Xiaomi). Everything works fine, WhatsApp notifications arrive but there are some

For me this problem is very real. For example I got my mother a Pocofone F1 (by Xiaomi). Everything works fine, WhatsApp notifications arrive but there are some apps which just get crushed by Xiaomi's battery saver. Audible's lock-screen widget for example just does not show up unless you enable/disable 2-3 battery saving and notification settings after installing the app. I think this incantation can't be expected even from advanced users. Normal users will just give up and live with terrible UX, complain to the dev or switch to another app. The same goes for fitbit, getting it to sync in the background involves a similar mixture of battery saving and notification settings which are labeled in a way that noone would dare to change them or have questionable defaults. None of this was an issue on the Nexus 5X. To me it looks like Xiaomi has a whitelist of apps which get special defaults when installing so they work fine while others which are not on this whitelist don't get this treatment. I can understand the benefits of aggressive battery saving especially as there are apps which behave badly but the state it has come to now is terrible UX and is just another frustration instead if actually delivering a benefit to the user. This seems to me like "optimisation" for the sake of benchmarks and marketing claims.

simonh 8y ago
If they didn't do this sort of aggressive system management, I'm wondering what the negative effects would be for them as a brand. I doubt it would be about benchmarks, those are generally done on clean systems at least for review purposes. Likewise Marketing is mainly about features. I suppose it must be genuinely about the user experience and brand perception by device owners. If the phone slows down and the battery drains fast users will blame the phone manufacturer, while if apps crash or app features don't work users will blame the app vendor even though the reality in both cases would be the other way around.
yiyus 8y ago
Go to the developers settings and turn off MIUI optimization. That's the only setting that worked for me. No more killed bg apps.
jeswin 8y ago
The first thing I do on any Xiaomi phone is to install Lineage OS - because MIUI is just unusable for me. Lineage 16 release for Poco F1 is very stable although it's not an official release yet.
CannisterFlux 8y ago
Another anecdote: my wife and a colleague at work (so 2 different people I know) have Xiaomi Note fives, and this model kills the stock alarm clock app! Regularly for both these people the alarm does not go off. My wife keeps an old Nokia candy bar phone around as a backup alarm it has happened so often. There's a workaround, maybe just placebo?, for this too: you can go to the recent apps screen and pin the app. But any kind of system update seems to undo the fix. I imagine your audible lock-screen widget will have the same issue, that system updates break the fix, and MIUI updates quite regularly. I have a Xiaomi A1, with a more stock version of Android, and so far this has not been an issue. But I noticed in the recent Pie update that it mentioned "battery improvements". I've had no problem with battery before now, it lasts all day easily and I get home with 70% or so. I hope it doesn't start killing the alarm clock at night, when it's plugged in to charge, just to save battery.
Abishek_Muthian 8y ago
MIUI has always known for aggressive sleep patterns, considering Pocofone is an India targeted device & WhatsApp is the go-to social media platform in India; It's intriguing that they haven't fixed such issues.

simonh 8y ago

If they didn't do this sort of aggressive system management, I'm wondering what the negative effects would be for them as a brand. I doubt it would be about benchmarks, those are generally done on clean systems at least for review purposes. Likewise Marketing is mainly about features. I suppose it must be genuinely about the user experience and brand perception by device owners. If the phone slows down and the battery drains fast users will blame the phone manufacturer, while if apps crash or app features don't work users will blame the app vendor even though the reality in both cases would be the other way around.

yiyus 8y ago

Go to the developers settings and turn off MIUI optimization. That's the only setting that worked for me. No more killed bg apps.

jeswin 8y ago

The first thing I do on any Xiaomi phone is to install Lineage OS - because MIUI is just unusable for me. Lineage 16 release for Poco F1 is very stable although it's not an official release yet.

CannisterFlux 8y ago

Another anecdote: my wife and a colleague at work (so 2 different people I know) have Xiaomi Note fives, and this model kills the stock alarm clock app! Regularly for both these people the alarm does not go off. My wife keeps an old Nokia candy bar phone around as a backup alarm it has happened so often. There's a workaround, maybe just placebo?, for this too: you can go to the recent apps screen and pin the app. But any kind of system update seems to undo the fix. I imagine your audible lock-screen widget will have the same issue, that system updates break the fix, and MIUI updates quite regularly. I have a Xiaomi A1, with a more stock version of Android, and so far this has not been an issue. But I noticed in the recent Pie update that it mentioned "battery improvements". I've had no problem with battery before now, it lasts all day easily and I get home with 70% or so. I hope it doesn't start killing the alarm clock at night, when it's plugged in to charge, just to save battery.

Abishek_Muthian 8y ago

MIUI has always known for aggressive sleep patterns, considering Pocofone is an India targeted device & WhatsApp is the go-to social media platform in India; It's intriguing that they haven't fixed such issues.