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

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.

Comments

Good

[ArchieBunker]

We don't need that shit running in the background. Much like every windows program that wants to run at startup.

Re:Good

[svanheulen]

While I agree for most applications, I'm actually having a problem with this behavior on my Samsung phone. I use an always-on VPN which will often lose connection and then not reconnect because the system has stopped/suspended the VPN application. There are options for disabling the Samsung "battery saver" functions for certain applications but even after doing that, it still happens (although not as often).

Re:Good

[The-Ixian]

I have found on my OP that adding apps to the "don't optimize" list in Android and/or "locking" the app in the run list solves any issues arising from battery optimizations.

I have a couple of apps (smart wifi toggler and calls blacklist pro) that need to run all the time. Doing the above solved the issue of those apps getting killed.

Re:Good

[crow]

Exactly.

I want to stop a lot of apps from being able to self-start. For most apps, if I don't click on it, it should never start, but obviously there are exceptions. Whether they're self-starting for nefarious reasons, or for features I'm not interested in, I want them locked down.

Likewise for background operation. Many apps shouldn't be running in the background at all, and I would like the ability to control this.

I also want the ability to turn off network access to apps that don't need it (at least for any feature I'm using). I've started using the NetGuard app that runs as a VPN to give me this feature, but it should be available by default. Remember when Android used to consider network access as an app permission? Bring that back so that I can deny it.

Re:Good

[Iwastheone]

I've had to resort to using "NoRoot Firewall" (by Grey Shirts) to block apps access on my non-rooted phone to keep Facebook & other apps from phoning home.

Re:Good

[GuB-42]

We don't need that shit running in the background.

That's unless you do.
You don't want apps running in the background, except you want to be notified of messages by your favorite instant messenger, or you want your fitness tracker to actually track, or be notified of traffic jams.

What you really want, like everyone else, is that your phone magically guesses which background processes you want and with ones you don't. Unfortunately, there is no magic, but it doesn't stop manufacturers from trying, and failing.

The worst part is that there is not standard. It results in apps behaving differently depending on smartphone models, with different kinds of manual overrides.

Re: Good

[c6gunner]

New versions of android (starting with either nougat or oreo) do give you the ability to block network access to either WiFi or cell networks, or both.

LineageOS (via privacy guard) gives you the option to prevent apps from auto-starting, as well as to prevent them from running in the background.

Useful background processes?

[QuietLagoon]

Useful background processes that are useful for whom? The developers who want to harvest data continuously?

Re:Useful background processes?

[agoodm]

To me! Android Doze broke K9mail unless you found some obscure menu which disabled the functionality. Its a total mess!

Re:Useful background processes?

[dwpro]

Strangely, the issue is the exact opposite. Push notifications, ie, firebase messages, actually work fine, it's the stuff that needs to wake up and do something on a schedule basis when the phone is in 'deep doze' that get the shaft. Check out the 'FCM' section here for more info. Regardless, even with explicit battery saving exclusions, we are unable to do get GPS location when the phone goes into deep doze after an hour no matter what we do. Quite frustrating to try and do real work on a phone with these arbitrary (and unevenly distributed) restrictions.

Superficially?

[Junta]

What, some background process that's responsible for somehow updating the batter meter, resulting in it not going down even though the battery is going down?

No, that's not the case? Then the battery life is not 'superficially' extended, it is either extended or it isn't. If they claim better battery life as a reason, but they don't actually get battery life, that is not superficially extended, that is flat out incorrect.

Quite annoying

[Tomahawk]

This is quite annoying. I found stuff like 'FolderSync', which will allow you to, say, copy the contents of a directory from your phone to your Google Drive automatically every night, would get killed off mid copy as it runs as a background tab.

Similarly when copying a large file using a file manager, or downloading a large file in the background.

It's possible to set an app up as an exception, but you have to do this for all applications that you want to be able to run in the background.
Yes there are some apps that you probably don't want to run, but it's really frustrating when it stops the apps you want to allow run, and you have to go hunting for a setting that has a different name on each phone.

Smaller and Thicker!

[Zorro]

Smaller and thicker phones with a decently thick battery.

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

Re:Smaller and Thicker!

[tooyoung]

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

But then you wouldn't need to also carry a knife!

Android is a mess

[DogDude]

I just got an Android phone because I had to due (main phone is a Windows phone). Holy shit, what a mess it is. It has tons of processes that are indecipherable. How does anybody manage all of that?

Re:Android is a mess

[ilsaloving]

How does anybody manage all of that?

Wrong question. The real question is why should a user HAVE to manage their phone like a sysadmin?

It's a phone. It's an *appliance*. If a user is required to manage their phone to such a degree, then there are severe and fundamental flaws in the phone's OS.

This all stems from the fact that Google gave developers too much control, and developers treated phones as if they were PCs instead of embedded mobile devices. As much as I hate to say it, Apple was right to start with a locked down OS. It is always more difficult to take away permissions and capabilities than it is to gradually give them.

It's been very well established at this point that developers cannot be trusted to do this properly, so it's up to the OS to be tight-fisted in how apps operate. This is especially true when it comes to limited-resource devices like phones. Now Android is in the completely expected position of trying to lock things down without breaking half the apps on the app store.

Re:Android is a mess

[unrealmp3]

The file manager is a joke though.

Re: Bitching About User Control

[Tomahawk]

The issue is when you download an app and expect it to work, and it doesn't. And the reason is because the phone manufacturer decided to kill the app off and not tell you. And then you complain to the dev that it doesn't work and the poor dev is left telling you how to fix something that the phone manufacturer put in place that's non-standard.

I currently have a problem where chromecast connections (from YouTube or NetFlix) get disconnected on my phone when I turn the screen off. My chromecast will still play, but if I open the app again I generally have to reconnect, or even kill off the app and run it again and then reconnect. It's likely caused by Sony killing off some background processes, and I can't find what process it's killing off.

Re:We could have had a healthy phone eco system

[Chrisq]

But you had to suck the green robot's cock.

I for one welcome our green robot cock, sorry, uhm I mean overlords.

What you want vs everyone else

[sjbe]

Smaller and thicker phones with a decently thick battery.

Ok, that is what YOU want. That has little reflection on what everyone else might want. I don't need a smaller phone (I like the size of the iPhone X) but I wouldn't object to the battery being thicker and it having a better camera. But that is what I want and you might feel differently. Some people want a tablet sized phone for some reason (bad eyesight, showing off, just like big screens, etc) and that's their right.

Personally I'm fine with the base phone being thin provided they make an actually decent battery case which nobody has so far. Every battery case I've seen to date has been a clumsy and ugly hack, including the ones the OEMs make (looking at you Apple). They could actually put real functions into the case besides padding and a battery but to date no phone maker seems interested in bothering.

Moto seems to be good

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

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.

Re:Moto seems to be good

[itsme1234]

I think you kind of shot yourself in the foot at every step. The Nokia we're talking about here (the one making Android phones) has nothing to do with the one sold to Microsoft (making Windows Phones and earlier feature phones). This Nokia's commitment is to "clean Android" and all their phones worth considering have Android One, I haven't seen anything else. If you look at https://www.android.com/one/ they are by far the manufacturer with the largest number of models, 7 (while most are missing or have one or two lost phones there).

So what do we want?

[Registered Coward v2]

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?

Re:I'm fine with this

[Goose In Orbit]

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...

Android ist running into the same problems...

[joh]

...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.