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Top Android Phone Makers Are Killing Useful Background Processes and Breaking 3rd-Party Apps To 'Superficially Improve' Battery Life, Developers Allege (dontkillmyapp.com)

Posted by msmash on from the closer-look dept.

A team of developers has accused several popular smartphone vendors of compromising the functionality of third-party apps and other background processes on their phones in an attempt to "superficially improve" the battery life. The team, Urbandroid, further alleges that these vendors have not correctly implemented Doze mode feature that Google introduced with Android Marshmallow. They also say that Google appears to be doing nothing about it.

Among the worst offenders are, per developers (in descending order): Nokia, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Huawei, Meizu, Sony, Samsung, and HTC.

5 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Smaller and Thicker! by Zorro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Smaller and thicker phones with a decently thick battery.

    We DON'T need a 7 inch phone as thin as a knife!

  2. Moto seems to be good by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I think it is time to buy only phones that are "Android One" compatible. According to Google, these phones must use stock android with absolutely no modification. And Google will update them without going through the manufacturer.

    Not surprised Nokia being the leader. It is owned by Microsoft now, and Microsoft will always game every benchmark.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  3. So what do we want? by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    An open OS that manufacturers can tailor or a standard one controlled by one company to ensure compatibility?

    Manufacturers not letting apps run in the background doing who knows what or allowing them and not having background processes top unexpectedly?

    --
    I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
  4. Re:I'm fine with this by Goose+In+Orbit · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What about scheduled backups?

    Titanium Backup fails to run any scheduled tasks on my handset - unless the battery "optimisation" for it is turned off... ...run it manually, and it's fine...

  5. Android ist running into the same problems... by joh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...that Apple tried to avoid to begin with in iOS: Once you allow apps to run in the background, more and more apps want to do that and the bottom line is that the phone is busy all the time and sucks your battery dry and nobody knows why.

    Apple was quite drastic and just didn't allow background tasks with very few exceptions: VoiceIP apps, chat apps and audio apps, also apps are allowed to finish tasks (like downloads) they began while they were in the foreground for max. 5 minutes. Some people think this is too strict, but the sweet spot is somewhere between "no background tasks at all" and "whatever, let apps do what they want", with both extremes probably being utterly wrong.

    You won't find a solution that will satisfy everyone, but as soon as you have phone manufacturers putting up their own policies and hacks nobody knows what will happen with his app when and why and under which Android version. The fact that they seem to NEED their own hacks seems to indicate that Google didn't really solve this problem with Android.