Android Oreo Bug Eats Up Mobile Data Even When On Wi-Fi (betanews.com)

Mark Wilson shares a report from BetaNews: An apparent bug with Android Oreo has been discovered which means Google's mobile operating system could be munching its way through your data allowance, even if you're connected to a wireless network. A thread on Reddit highlighted the issue, with many people pointing out that it could prove expensive for anyone not using an unlimited data plan. Google is apparently aware of the problem and is working on a patch, but in the meantime Oreo users are being warned to consider disabling mobile data when they are at home or using a wireless connection elsewhere.

Comments

Will anybody actually get that patch?

[paulatz]

With the current record of manufacturers and carriers not giving a damn about porting the Android updates to their products, I'm happy that google is developing a patch, but I'm wondering if anybody will actually receive the patch.

Re:Will anybody actually get that patch?

[Z00L00K]

And with the current situation where the users of a device is prevented from doing the changes they like to their devices including downgrading the OS the interest in Android goes down.

It's a sour situation right now when you aren't in control of the device you have bought. I can understand that there may be some constraints to at least prevent malware but the owner of the device shall be able to be in control of the device and not risk it being bricked.

A major reason for having more control over your device is to get rid of bloatware that the manufacturers have a habit of installing. Some bloatware is also a security risk for various reasons.

Re:Will anybody actually get that patch?

[Stuarticus]

Oreo is still in Beta so it's only really available on Google devices right now. I'm running it and my mobile data looks perfectly reasonable, so the headline should read "Beta OS may lead to slight increase in data use".

Re:Will anybody actually get that patch?

[Anonymous Coward]

And with the current situation where the users of a device is prevented from doing the changes they like to their devices including downgrading the OS the interest in Android goes down.

It's a sour situation right now when you aren't in control of the device you have bought. I can understand that there may be some constraints to at least prevent malware but the owner of the device shall be able to be in control of the device and not risk it being bricked.

A major reason for having more control over your device is to get rid of bloatware that the manufacturers have a habit of installing. Some bloatware is also a security risk for various reasons.

Only buy a phone that's supported by LineageOS. Then you get updated builds every Thursday. My phone, a Oneplus 2, only officially has Marshmallow. Thanks to LineageOS, I'm running Nougat. It's also more responsive, I get better battery life and I only had to install the bare minimum of Google apps needed for Play (mostly use APKUpdater and F-Droid anyway). Then I just root it with Magisk and still pass SafetyNet (I only care about Pokemon Go).

TL;DR: buy a LineageOS supported phone or an iPhone if you want regular updates.

Re:Will anybody actually get that patch?

[miscellaneousfiles22]

It's not in Beta - it was released on 21st August.

Re:Will anybody actually get that patch?

[geekmux]

It was RTMd about a week ago ... do keep up.

The 2017 definition of RTM - "A larger pool of beta testers."

Do keep up.

Re:Will anybody actually get that patch?

[idontgno]

This is why the standard Google "perpetual beta" joke isn't very damn funny. It's "on paper" officially released. So it's not supposed to be beta-quality.

But the phased rollout of 8.0 means that the "lucky winners" of this bug are the owners of the "Google device" class, like Pixel and Nexus users. The overwhelming majority of near-future Oreo users won't get it until their phone manufacturer and wireless provider have had a chance to hack on it (i.e., add their own bloatware), so maybe they'll have a chance to roll in the patch for this behavior before releasing to manufacturing? <cross fingers>

Re: Will anybody actually get that patch?

[TheRaven64]

If the update came from the carrier, then there's probably a class-action lawsuit waiting to happen. If the carrier pushes you an update that makes your device do something that allows them to charge you money, then it's probably a good argument to be made in court that you're not liable for any of that extra cost.

Possible workaround missing from the summary,natch

[shabble]

some have suggested that the Mobile Data Always Active option is to blame. You can access this setting by enabling Developer Options and flicking the toggle to the disabled position. In previous versions of Android, the Mobile Data Always Active option was disabled by default, but is enabled now in Oreo.

How much data?

[cmseagle]

The article and the Reddit thread both talk about a "huge spike" in data usage without including any hard figures. What are we talking about here? 100 MB per day? A gigabyte?

Re:How much data?

[johannesg]

The article and the Reddit thread both talk about a "huge spike" in data usage without including any hard figures. What are we talking about here? 100 MB per day? A gigabyte?

It's roughly two football fields worth of data, I believe.

Re:How much data?

[swillden]

The article and the Reddit thread both talk about a "huge spike" in data usage without including any hard figures. What are we talking about here? 100 MB per day? A gigabyte?

Dunno. I've been running Oreo on and off for about six months now, though, and noticed no data usage while at home. So at least for my usage patterns it's clearly not large. Maybe some apps are worse than others? Or maybe it depends on your home Wifi. I could see that flaky Wifi combined with "mobile data always on" could cause the phone to fall back to using mobile data if the Wifi seems bad. It would do that with mobile data off, too, but it would take longer to make the switch, which might give the Wifi time to start working so you wouldn't end up using mobile data -- just have bad network performance.

Android Oreo bug eats up mobile data on Wi-Fi

[DontBeAMoran]

I've heard that dipping your smartphone in milk fixes the problem.