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There's really no good reason that a network connection open in the background needs to use extra battery, if configured carefully. If configured incorrectly, i
by JoshTriplett 7y ago
There's really no good reason that a network connection open in the background needs to use extra battery, if configured carefully. If configured incorrectly, it absolutely would, but a background connection doesn't need to regularly wake the phone up, just as Google's own push messaging service doesn't.
- _-___________-_ 7y agoMore connections probably does mean more wakeups, in general, though. FCM will coalesce notifications that happen close together in time, for example. Even if OpenPush does that (I haven't read all the details yet), it still means two coalesced batches of notifications rather than one if you have some apps using FCM and some using OpenPush. The situation obviously gets even worse if every app implements push itself. I still think it's worth it, to be clear, and for people who want a fully de-Googled device, hopefully eventually all their apps will use OpenPush and the battery life situation is the same as a device where all the apps use FCM. (Assuming OpenPush implements similar coalescing.)
- izacus 7y agoYou're right, there isn't. But what years of unrestricted background execution have shown us is that developers these days will choose the lazy solution over the right solution about 9 times out of 10. I'd be the richest guy if I'd get a penny every time I've seen an Android app do background polling every 5 minutes (!) instead of using push notifications or even long polling. The usual response to recommendation to improve the design was "Why? It works and it's a lot of work to run a push server!". So as much as I dislike restrictions on my operating systems, Google forcing developers to push notifications has massively improved battery life across the ecosystem.