Android vendors, don’t kill my app • Hacker News Board

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#401

Post by troyvit » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 3:32 PM UTC

adrianhon wrote: post #148

For our Zombies, Run! run tracking/audio adventure app, "battery management" is turning into our most consistent customer complaint, to the point where it's impacting review scores, active users, and probably subscriptions. The result of the changes made by Huawei, OnePlus, Xiaomi, and Samsung mean that our app is killed during runs, and people interpret that as the app crashing. We're trying to figure out the best w…

I don't think it's just that. As an app user I can say I'm tired of apps running in the background that don't need to be, and there are tons of them that do it. Maybe Android needs to be more refined in how it handles apps that run in the background but as a user who prizes control of my phone I also think developers need to think twice about what they leave running in the background and why.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#402

Post by charleslmunger » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 3:59 PM UTC

Skunkleton wrote: post #326

masklinn wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As TFA notes (in the Nokia section, possibly others): > This app kills apps in the most brutal way we have seen so far among Android vendors. You can't detect that your application was kill -9'd. I don't think you can detect that "PowerSavingAppG3" is running either (I'd guess it's running as root and you're not), so you can't even infer from its existence that your application will be traumatically killed in short o…

Sure you can: 1. Create an empty file when the application launches 2. When the application terminates, write the reason for termination into the file. 3. When the app launches again, read the file. If it was empty, then you were SIGKILL'd, or you crashed.

Android doesn't offer any signal of normal termination. Your process gets killed when the OS needs memory for some other app.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#403

Post by vxNsr » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #360

vxNsr wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Classic HN response. I'd guess a FTP and a linux file-server would solve all your filesharing woes as well. No dev making a mass market device or software should build as if the 1% graybeard engineer is gonna be the only user, that's a lot more user hostile.

Android's "these are the apps killing your battery life" interface is perfectly usable by Joe Everyuser. This is a specious argument.

Reality suggests otherwise.

Every modern phone today will give you a list of the apps that take the most juice, and yet somehow for some reason people still install facebook. We might need to protect users from themselves.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#404

Post by crtasm » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

Signal's support docs have instructions for various brands of phone. Really shouldn't be necessary

https://support.signal.org/hc/en-us/articles/360007318711-Tr...

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#405

Post by xyproto » Tue, Jan 15, 2019, 11:14 PM UTC

cwyers wrote: post #53

xyproto wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then you need to uninstall the app. No phone is going to guarantee you that it won't run.

Yes, I just have to cover the same functionality in other ways before removing my accounts.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#406

Post by richardwhiuk » Wed, Jan 16, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

colejohnson66 wrote: post #251

richardwhiuk wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does - the one that works properly is https://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/AlarmMan... However, the implementations of the API are questionable. Some calls to that API on some OEMs device round alarms to the nearest minute, some to the nearest ten minutes.

> Some calls to that API on some OEMs device round alarms to the nearest minute, some to the nearest ten minutes. WHY? What benefit does that serve?

Rounding timers can greatly increase battery life, at the expense of apps not working - but who checks that apps work on their phone before buying it?

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#407

Post by richardwhiuk » Wed, Jan 16, 2019, 1:58 PM UTC

mfoy_ wrote: post #369

apexalpha wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Rounding to 10 min means you fire up the cpu and do all apps at once then go idle.

Oh, so when we say "alarms" we mean "background processes that occur at set intervals"? Not literally "alarms", like the ones that ring?

Both.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#408

Post by pja » Wed, Jan 16, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

sorenjan wrote: post #302

pja wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s there on my Nokia 7+ running Android 9.

Have you had any problems because of it?

Not once I turned off battery optimisation for the apps I wanted to run in the background (BBC Sounds / Radio apps, a couple of fitness related apps.)

The total lack of any feedback as to what was actually killing these apps in the first place is the problem - the user experience is terrible. The phone just kills an app that worked perfectly before this release of Android, with no explanation or notification so the user can correct false assumptions. The user is left poking about in the settings until they stumble across the battery optimisation and have an "ah ha!" moment.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#409

Post by admax88q » Wed, Jan 16, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #403

stickfigure wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Android's "these are the apps killing your battery life" interface is perfectly usable by Joe Everyuser. This is a specious argument.

Reality suggests otherwise. Every modern phone today will give you a list of the apps that take the most juice, and yet somehow for some reason people still install facebook. We might need to protect users from themselves.

Or users could start holding facebook accountable for shitty battery life.

I don't understand why phone manufacturers need to add features to protect facebook users from facebook. facebook has the money to build an app that isn't shit.

Re: Android vendors, don’t kill my app

#410

Post by admax88q » Wed, Jan 16, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #346

admax88q wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My XMPP client works perfectly on my Android phone. Prompt and reliable notifications of new messages. Better than most "Push Message" based clients I've used for other chat services. It's consistently the last in battery usage as well. Honestly I don't need the OS to protect me from poorly engineered apps, I just need it to correctly blame the apps so I know which ones to stop using.

Classic HN response. I'd guess a FTP and a linux file-server would solve all your filesharing woes as well. No dev making a mass market device or software should build as if the 1% graybeard engineer is gonna be the only user, that's a lot more user hostile.

The "which apps are using battery" feature is easily useable by novice users.

However most phone vendors incorrectly assume "background connections" will drain battery life despite evidence to the contrary.

Phone vendors have a vested interest though in forcing developers to use their proprietary "push" feature for syncing to phones, they say it's for "battery life" but really its about vendor lock in.

A well engineered app can sync over its own TCP connection just fine and not hurt battery life, but then such an app can work on any device, not just blessed Android builds that have access to GCM.