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Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

arstechnica.com

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Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#231

Post by kshacker »

emrah wrote: post #136
vishnuharidas wrote: post #135

I found that this saves a lot of battery. My old Motorola G5G is now sitting idle, and I had to charge it every 4-5 days. I found that if the phone is restarted and NOT unlocked , it will stay charged for more than 10 days. My best guess is that a screen unlock is required to start many of the OS-level services, which takes up all the battery. If this is true, then the new update will save a lot of battery for those…

A phone sitting idle is very unusual though, a very edge case

I have 3 phones, for various reasons. Not SIMs, but 3 devices. The usage is radically different between them. 2 of them are used daily but even there one routinely runs out of battery and other does not dip below 80%. The third one gets used when it gets used :)

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#232

Post by subscribed »

m-p-3 wrote: post #169

uhh, that's going to disrupt Briar Mailbox, which relies on an Android device to act as an always-on node. I really hope there is a way to toggle this. https://briarproject.org/download-briar-mailbox/

If you need to use Briar Mailbox, you're likely better off with GrapheneOS where this feature can be turned off.

It works there better anyway, because it's integrated with the OS, and not just one privileged service.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#233

Post by subscribed »

67593874748 wrote: post #80
Aeolun wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not clear to me at all why the ‘benefits’ presented outweigh the negatives (which is _my_ device doing anything without me instructing it to). Even if you can turn it off, this is apparently enabled by default. Law enforcement keeping hold of my phone for 3 days is simply not a realistic problem for me. Coming back to an annoyingly locked phone after forgetting it for a weekend very much is. The chances of law…

> Law enforcement keeping hold of my phone for 3 days is simply not a realistic problem for me. It's not a problem, until it suddenly is.

Especially with the glaring example unfolding right in front of our eyes.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#234

Post by subscribed »

imcritic wrote: post #6

Isn't this stupid? Why not flush something properly in the RAM instead to wipe the "cached" secrets? A full restart feels like an overkill.

It also terminates almost all malware and makes sure the device is encrypted and the keys cannot be extracted.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#235

Post by m-p-3 »

subscribed wrote: post #232
m-p-3 wrote: post #169

uhh, that's going to disrupt Briar Mailbox, which relies on an Android device to act as an always-on node. I really hope there is a way to toggle this. https://briarproject.org/download-briar-mailbox/

If you need to use Briar Mailbox, you're likely better off with GrapheneOS where this feature can be turned off. It works there better anyway, because it's integrated with the OS, and not just one privileged service.

To be honest, I kinda hope they'll offer it as a Linux service at some point, not super thrilled at running an old Android device as a server.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#236

Post by Suppafly »

Mine randomly reboots semi-periodically already, even when it hasn't been shown as having downloaded an update.

That said, I think this is a fairly good idea, although with the encryption stuff they do, this will cause people who rarely use their phones to miss calls and alarms.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#237

Post by throwaway314155 »

hackernewds wrote: post #227
Freak_NL wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, my first thought was “Don't they do this already?”, but apparently GrapheneOS was ahead of the curve there. Nice.

How would an OS taking over your hardware would be ahead of the curve or nice?

Because it's an effective tactic against exploits that can't survive a reboot, which is somewhat common from my understanding. The idea being that police can confiscate your phone and just keep it on and charged until they can buy or develop an exploit targeting your current device and software.

I was admittedly confused about this distinction at one point too. It's a trade-off (although few people effected by this own phones with truly free, user-respecting soft/hardware in the first place).

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#238

Post by Krssst »

arghwhat wrote: post #117
kqr wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds vendor-specific and not general for Android. I've never had that happen on any device but Windows and I would be very upset if it did happen.

This is default on iOS and on many Android versions. It's often configurable, but e.g. carrier policy or local vendors can enforce it. To have updates automatically install overnight is the maximally desirable scenario - waiting for user approval usually result in open vulnerabilities, and if you interact with a prompt you are by definition using your device and it is therefore a much worse time than while you're asl…

> maximally desirable

On Android, my experience has been that new major versions are often unstable / involve some risk of bricking / include feature regressions (dumbing down of multi-task in Android 13 if I remember well). Waiting for a few month before installing a major update, while not optimal for security, is necessary to make sure that the most critical bugs are fixed beforehand.

Regarding applications, today there's so many applications being always updated all the time that there's no way it's good for the flash memory to constantly rewrite it every day. Plus this often leads to random application restarts while they are updated automatically. (and non-OSS applications updates can result in unwanted changes such as more ads, random changes in UI...).

It's still possible to disable automated updates on Android and I am glad that they allow it.

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#239

Post by [deleted] »

greatgib wrote: post #34

It's good to have an option like that, even being a default, but there definitively need a switch to disable that if it is your own will. It's not even necessarily that good enough against cops, because in a lot of shitty countries, even some pretending to be democratics, not disclosing or at least inputting your password might be a crime severely punished. If I'm not wrong, there was a guy that had to stay years in…

[deleted]

Re: Android phones will soon reboot themselves after sitting unused for three days

#240

Post by dheera »

rvnx wrote: post #50
greatgib wrote: post #34

It's good to have an option like that, even being a default, but there definitively need a switch to disable that if it is your own will. It's not even necessarily that good enough against cops, because in a lot of shitty countries, even some pretending to be democratics, not disclosing or at least inputting your password might be a crime severely punished. If I'm not wrong, there was a guy that had to stay years in…

Interestingly, it could also be seen the other way around; it's a potential way for Google to force deployments of system updates (potentially at the request of law enforcement). With an automatic reboot, then the update can automatically be applied without user action.

They should really implement a dual user / dual password system to combat those countries.

If you enter password 1 it goes into your normal account, if you enter password 2 it goes into another user account with a burner environment where you can install a few token commonly used apps for plausible deniability.

The existence of password 2 should be optional and you should not be able to tell if the system has one or two passwords configured.

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