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My previous phone was Oneplus with such an extreme battery manager (rated by some resource in top 3 of most aggressive managers). There were messaging apps whic

by Yizahi 7y ago

My previous phone was Oneplus with such an extreme battery manager (rated by some resource in top 3 of most aggressive managers). There were messaging apps which worked just fine in background and send push notifications even after prolonged periods in background (e.g. Telegram and others) and some apps which were killed in minutes after being minimized (e.g. official Skype app). Point is - I suspect that there is a correct way to make inoffensive apps which will work in background, but certain minority of developers simply don't give a damn about battery usage and proper coding guidelines.

me551ah 7y ago
Oneplus incidentally maintains a whitelist of apps which are allowed to run in the background and only apps in that list can run for extended periods. While it is possible for users to add apps to that list, it comes with a set of apps already whitelisted ( like whatsapp). I found it out the hard way while working on Android. You can read more about it here in case you are curious: https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly-broken-b8dbec63f48a https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly...
EwanToo 7y ago
The reason why some apps work is they've been whitelisted by the manufacturer, not a choice by the developers (except maybe a choice not to pay to be whitelisted?) If you're not whitelisted, there's very little you can do except for ask users to take various manual steps to change operating systems.
ignoramous 7y ago
> My previous phone was Oneplus with such an extreme battery manager (rated by some resource in top 3 of most aggressive managers). This site ranks Android OEMs that kill apps in the name of battery optimization: https://dontkillmyapp.com/ https://dontkillmyapp.com/ I believe this aggressive behaviour tends to come from user-feedback, given users care a lot about battery endurance and heat dissipation.
- mcny 7y ago
  > I believe this aggressive behaviour tends to come from user-feedback, given users care a lot about battery endurance and heat dissipation. Absolutely. I don't want my phone to run hot or low on battery when I'm not using it. If there was a way to shut down all background tasks when the screen is off, I'd gladly do that (second device, no sim, WiFi only use case).
- darkwater 7y ago
  And by poorly written apps which actually DO drain the battery while doing nothing useful. So I don't feel like putting all the blame on the OEM manufacturers.
  - zrm 7y ago
    The problem is they're using bad heuristics. Just because a service runs 24 hours a day doesn't mean it's using a significant amount of battery. The harder problem is, just because a service uses a significant amount of battery doesn't mean it's doing nothing useful. If I want my email app to download my emails as they come in because I'm on a slow network connection, I want it to do that even if I get a lot of emails. Especially then. Even if that means I have to charge my phone every day instead of every week. What they should be doing is using a blacklist instead of a whitelist. Not because they're actually going to be able to blacklist every misbehaving app (though they could certainly catch the most popular offenders), but because that's how you get developers to change their behavior. If everybody is restricted by default then there is no incentive for bad developers to do better. They get restricted, they weren't going to get whitelisted either way, so they go on making a wasteful app. By contrast, if making a wasteful app could get you blacklisted and restricted when you wouldn't have been otherwise, well now you've got a deterrent. Meanwhile they wouldn't be defaulting to breaking well-behaved apps that are designed to efficiently run all the time.

by Yizahi 7y ago

me551ah 7y ago

Oneplus incidentally maintains a whitelist of apps which are allowed to run in the background and only apps in that list can run for extended periods. While it is possible for users to add apps to that list, it comes with a set of apps already whitelisted ( like whatsapp). I found it out the hard way while working on Android. You can read more about it here in case you are curious: https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly-broken-b8dbec63f48a https://hackernoon.com/notifications-in-android-are-horribly...

EwanToo 7y ago

The reason why some apps work is they've been whitelisted by the manufacturer, not a choice by the developers (except maybe a choice not to pay to be whitelisted?) If you're not whitelisted, there's very little you can do except for ask users to take various manual steps to change operating systems.

ignoramous 7y ago

> My previous phone was Oneplus with such an extreme battery manager (rated by some resource in top 3 of most aggressive managers). This site ranks Android OEMs that kill apps in the name of battery optimization: https://dontkillmyapp.com/ https://dontkillmyapp.com/ I believe this aggressive behaviour tends to come from user-feedback, given users care a lot about battery endurance and heat dissipation.

mcny 7y ago
> I believe this aggressive behaviour tends to come from user-feedback, given users care a lot about battery endurance and heat dissipation. Absolutely. I don't want my phone to run hot or low on battery when I'm not using it. If there was a way to shut down all background tasks when the screen is off, I'd gladly do that (second device, no sim, WiFi only use case).
darkwater 7y ago
And by poorly written apps which actually DO drain the battery while doing nothing useful. So I don't feel like putting all the blame on the OEM manufacturers.
- zrm 7y ago
  The problem is they're using bad heuristics. Just because a service runs 24 hours a day doesn't mean it's using a significant amount of battery. The harder problem is, just because a service uses a significant amount of battery doesn't mean it's doing nothing useful. If I want my email app to download my emails as they come in because I'm on a slow network connection, I want it to do that even if I get a lot of emails. Especially then. Even if that means I have to charge my phone every day instead of every week. What they should be doing is using a blacklist instead of a whitelist. Not because they're actually going to be able to blacklist every misbehaving app (though they could certainly catch the most popular offenders), but because that's how you get developers to change their behavior. If everybody is restricted by default then there is no incentive for bad developers to do better. They get restricted, they weren't going to get whitelisted either way, so they go on making a wasteful app. By contrast, if making a wasteful app could get you blacklisted and restricted when you wouldn't have been otherwise, well now you've got a deterrent. Meanwhile they wouldn't be defaulting to breaking well-behaved apps that are designed to efficiently run all the time.