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Android vendors, don’t kill my app

dontkillmyapp.com

21–30 of 414 posts

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#21
post #8

Custom alarm clocks and health trackers work fine on my OnePlus. What is the problem exactly?

I had problems with synchronization between my OnePlus 3 and my Fitbit tracker (it'd work fine for an hour or a day and then just stop), but those problems went away when I upgraded to a OnePlus 6T. Regarding slack notifications and similar things, all I can say is that they sometimes appear a few seconds later than on my active desktop, but I don't find that delay to be a problem.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#22
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing background tasks is great and Android does that automatically to save battery usage. But these manufacturers have implemented their own functionality on top of Android which cripples even critical messaging applications like WhatsApp, Slack, Gmail by not delivering Instant Messages notifications instantly.

I don't want Slack or Gmail to deliver notifications instantly. I'd love to have functionality that saves battery by delaying them.

Get one of the phones listed in the link. Xiaomi is brilliant in this regard !

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#23
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Killing background tasks is great and Android does that automatically to save battery usage. But these manufacturers have implemented their own functionality on top of Android which cripples even critical messaging applications like WhatsApp, Slack, Gmail by not delivering Instant Messages notifications instantly.

I don't want Slack or Gmail to deliver notifications instantly. I'd love to have functionality that saves battery by delaying them.

Both these apps allow you to do that in-app. I have Gmail not notify me for work emails and notify me for stuff on my personal account.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#24
post #7
post #3

I actually like the move to kill background tasks. Don't get me wrong I think they're great when they're needed. But if I only installed the app because the mobile site is crippled I don't want it to destroy my battery polling for content changes when I only open the app once in a blue moon.

Killing background tasks is great and Android does that automatically to save battery usage. But these manufacturers have implemented their own functionality on top of Android which cripples even critical messaging applications like WhatsApp, Slack, Gmail by not delivering Instant Messages notifications instantly.

I don't want WhatsApp (owned by Facebook) to run in the background on my phone at all times. I don't trust them, especially after Instagram (also owned by Facebook) started using the camera by itself on my phone, without my permission.

Slack would be fine, I guess.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#25
post #8

Custom alarm clocks and health trackers work fine on my OnePlus. What is the problem exactly?

We are encountering tremendous problems with OnePlus while keeping up the Bluetooth connection in the background with our Heath Tracker. Seems it might be related to the situation described in the linked page by OP.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#26

tl;dr The author would like to run his app in the background without notifying the user about it, because otherwise the author would just add add an ongoing notification, which would allow the app to run in the background forever on all platforms.

I wouldn't necessarily ascribe anything shady here (which I got a bit of from your comment, if that was intended).

I found this helpful in debugging an issue I've had with my OnePlus - namely, many apps that I'd like to get notifications from abruptly stop getting them after a while, and I have to reopen them to get notifications. Today alone I had to manually open Facebook Messenger and Venmo in order to get notifications from them - this seriously degrades the functionality of those apps since opening Messenger multiple times a day still isn't apparently sufficient to exempt it from being "optimized".

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#27

I haven't followed the scene closely, but isn't it the same behavior as Apple? Can you even do background tasks in iOS?

The apps are not allowed to do background process. But can register a callback to be called when is in background. But there is no guarantee it will be called for sure.

For some cases, there is a 100% guarantee, especially for Bluetooth. I think we never lost a >sample< in the background so far (where I can't say the same for the Android).

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#28
post #18

Only issue I have on my OnePlus 3T is Slack. I'm constantly missing or getting late notifications. And I tried fixing the issues with their support, but it didn't lead anywhere. They tried their best, but I can't blame the phone vendor because I have a dozen more apps with notifications, services and whatnot running quite well. I've been out of Android app development for some time, but I hang out with a few Android…

Whether it's an Android issue or specific to OnePlus, I've noticed I have to reconfigure Slack as a "non-battery-optimised" app after each app update.

EDIT: More info on the subpage: "To avoid the system to automatically revert the not optimized setting, you must also lock the app into the ‘Recent App’ list." https://dontkillmyapp.com/oneplus

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#29
I don’t see their problem with Sony’s stamina mode:

The UI makes it very clear if you have it enabled, it explicitly tells you what it does and I never missed anything because of it.

If you keep your phone on silent you don’t care if it delays fetching messages until you actually turn on your screen anyway...

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