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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) 162

Posted by msmash 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.
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Top Android Phone Makers Are Killing Useful Background Processes and Breaking 3rd-Party Apps To 'Superficially Improve' Battery More

Top Android Phone Makers Are Killing Useful Background Processes and Breaking 3rd-Party Apps To 'Superficially Improve' Battery

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  • Good (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

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

    • I've got a Xiaomi phone that for a few tasks, I had to "drill down" and disable the automatic power-saving mode. Not hard to do but was slightly hidden. Noticed when a few apps "Back Button" were still there on the GUI but not actually functional.

      No big. Glad they did it (and also glad they left an escape to disable it for specific apps.)

    • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @11:41AM (#57959536)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      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

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Puls4r ( 724907 )
        Except I don't. There's only three "apps" I want to constantly update. That's my phone (so it rings when people call), my email, and my text messaging.

        Not instagram, snapchat, etc. Nevermind that I don't use them, there is NO good way in the android ecosystem to prevent them from staying resident in the background if you run them once. Many other apps have this same problem. For no good reason at all, they are sitting in the background. There is no one ounce of functionality they add to my user exp

    • Wait, wait...
      You might not need some shit that is running in the background. I might need it. Joe Thirdparty might see some of that shit as essential.
      Here's an example: The instant messaging app that my company is using (namely Slack). I absolutely require it to be running in the background, so that if there's an issue which requires my attention, I could be pinged and work on it. If the OS decides for me (which happens more and more often and I hate it!), I would end up not receiving messages when I have t

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

      You never specified what is running in the background. You don't need a trigger service running in the background when you want to trigger on events? You don't need a syncing service running in the background when you want to automatically cloud sync?

      Because that's the "shit" we're talking about. Samsung by default will kill both the Owncloud and IFTTT clients.

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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by agoodm ( 856768 )
      To me! Android Doze broke K9mail unless you found some obscure menu which disabled the functionality. Its a total mess!
      • Email should be pull not push.

        • Why? I mean, I have mine configured as pull, but what is wrong with getting a notification when you have a new email?

          • For me personally it adds to an already unacceptable signal-to-noise ratio in real-time communications. Email is asynchronous and always pull to me. If you want to reach me in real time, use a synchronous comm channel.

            • OK, but it doesn't hurt you or your workflow to have it configurable either way. People who want it to be close to real-time are happy and you are also happy, right?

              • The unfortunate part of communicating via text/forums is that everything seems like you are forcing a dichotomy unless you couch it very carefully. Yes, you are absolutely right, choice is good. There is a better way to have this conversation, i'll try to be more articulate in the future.
        • That's like, your opinion, man. E-mail push has been available for a while and worked perfectly fine. But the bigger problem is that often even periodic pull (setup to the interval I prefer) would not work unless you ripped out the power management "feature" from seven million different locations. And I would very much like a chat application that is totally independent of Google. Jabber is practically dead on Android because of the fucked up power management. It's ok for the OS to suspend overzealous ba

        • Maybe it's time to give up dial-up?

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by dwpro ( 520418 )
          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 [android.com] 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 the
          • GPS is computationally and radio expensive on the battery. You should not have access to it while in deep doze. Plus this helps as a psuedo-security measure to help prevent apps from harvesting continuous location data from users.

            What exactly is your use case for which you need full precision location information while the user is not using the phone?

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by dwpro ( 520418 )
              In my case, it's creating a breadcrumb trail for them so we can detect how many tobacco ads/stores they have come in contact with in their daily routes for the purpose of helping folks quit smoking and getting better data on exposure vs quit attempts. Despite motion supposedly waking deep-doze, it doesn't work reliably for us. It does drain the battery, of course, though not as badly as you might expect, at least on 6.x back when it worked reliably. Shouldn't the user be able to opt-in for this sort of

      • ...To me! ...

        I'm not saying that there is no use for background processes that benefits the users. But maybe google is locking things down in order to go after the data harvesters, and those who use the background processes for valid purposes can continue to do so (once they fix their code to work properly).

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Puls4r ( 724907 )
          If google is going after anyone, it's because they don't want those people having the same access GOOGLE has. There's no vested company interest in preventing app creators from harvesting your data, and google does nothing just to be nice.

  • Superficially? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Junta ( 36770 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @10:36AM (#57959046)

    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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      Yea, I think they probably meant artificially. Its artificial because it may affect the user's usage of the phone.

    • It's superficial because they are getting gains in battery life by removing functionality rather than actually improving the capacity or efficiency of the phone. That is, it connotes an improvement in the superficial appearance of things -- looking better rather than being better.

    • Then the battery life is not 'superficially' extended, it is either extended or it isn't.

      Splitting hairs will not help your cause. There are many apps that do background related tasks so infrequently that killing them has no more than a "superficial" improvement, which as the definition of the word implies it makes no difference at all to battery life.

      Android does not have an internal task scheduler so apps need to suspend themselves in order to run tasks. While they are suspended they have practically no impact on the device.

  • Quite annoying (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Tomahawk ( 1343 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @10:39AM (#57959064) Homepage

    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.

    • Bitching About User Control (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Seriously? You're bitching about having control of what hidden things your phone is doing? This is not a bad thing. Your phone shouldn't be doing shit behind your back without your explicit permission. ... and you're talking about important things, like bulk copies of files. That's a very good thing for you to have control over.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rcderp ( 5733190 )
      I recently (a few weeks ago) purchased a Nokia 6.1. I previously had a Samsung S7. I am using the same apps on the Nokia as I did on the Samsung. I have had quite a few apps that run some sort of background process and are now getting killed off regularly. I initially thought this may be related to the adaptive battery feature (New phone, so the machine learning behind this feature has to be 'trained'). After some experimentation, that didn't seem to be it. Although the apps I've seen affected are all

    • Oh I disagree.
      Essentially you're asserting apps should be able to run in background, unless you opt-out. That's a security nightmare.

      Far better to say on install "hey this has to run in the background to function, ok?". I can't tell you the number of apps I've uninstalled for background-running shenanigans - why does Soundcloud need to know my LOCATION, for example? Or this gps application need access to my contact list?

  • Smaller and Thicker! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zorro ( 15797 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @10:47AM (#57959122)

    Smaller and thicker phones with a decently thick battery.

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

    • 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 dece

      • That's exactly what the Moto Mods are for the Motorola Z phones. I'd argue those phones are actually more awkward without a mod. Unfortunately, that ecosphere seems to be dying, as pretty much all battery manufacturers have ceased making battery Moto Mods.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AvitarX ( 172628 )

          The bod batteries were pretty non-compelling.

          They already had decent battery life and the mod only was a tiny bit extra.

      • The Apple battery case is shaped like that for 2 reasons:

        1) Because it moves the battery out of the way of the antenna. This is the primary reason.
        2) It makes the phone easier to hold (kinda like a pop-socket, but uglier and always there)

        It's one of Apple's few forays into the realm of function with almost no regard to form. Or in this case, the form is part of the function, but the form looks like hell.

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

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

    • Smaller and thicker phones with a decently thick battery.

      Phones have been getting thicker and batteries have been getting larger consistently across models for the past 3 years. If you want an even thicker device, get yourself a battery boosting case and don't pretend like you speak for everyone.

  • I have a OnePlus 6 and I was having issues with applications getting killed in the background. Most frustratingly was when my couch to 5K app got task killed with about 45 seconds left at the end of my run. But guess what? In the settings menu you can disable battery optimization for specific apps. Haven't had a problem since.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Run faster?

  • Android is a mess (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @10:58AM (#57959216)
    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: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      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?

      They buy an iPhone instead. It has a well-designed, mature OS.

    • Re:Android is a mess (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ilsaloving ( 1534307 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @11:38AM (#57959492)

      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: (Score:2)

        by dwpro ( 520418 )
        if you want the phone to be a dumb appliance, that's your call, but I think many of us actually want _more_ control, not less. I have my phone hook up as the controller for a coffee roaster, and I don't want my background processes dying mid-roast (like it does now, post android version update). For a platform as diverse as android, I could see a spectrum of options being available, but specifically dis-allowing functionality that many users would find useful to appease those who want a dumb device is in

        • What you are talking about is tangental to my point.

          You are specifically trying to use a phone for a purpose it was never made for. You could accomplish the same thing with an arduino or a raspberry pi.

          The fact that you *can* do it with a phone is pretty cool, and I see no problem with giving people the option to hack their phone to pieces if they so choose.

          But when the average person buys a phone and takes it out of the box, it is an appliance. An advanced appliance that can run arbitrary software, but i

      • 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.

        This is a counter to an argument that was never fully explored. The GP said "how does anybody manage all of that", the answer is people don't. The phone happily manages itself. No issue with developers or anything, the fact that the GP sees indecipherable processes in the first place or anything beyond a list of apps that he himself installed shows not that Google didn't restrict control, it shows that the GP is doing too much digging and tinkering rather than just using their device.

        Now Android is in the completely expected position of trying to lock things down without breaking half the apps on the app store.

        Again it's nothing of t

        • Except that they *haven't* handled it "just fine for years". If it had been, then "idiots" wouldn't have been going around saying that they needed to micromanage their device.

          I mean, seriously, you are so utterly wrong that I can only assume that you posted for the express purpose of starting an argument.

          There are plenty of examples of random apps that run uncontrolled background processes that utterly destroy battery life. Hell, some of those apps are installed by the *manufacturer*, such as the suite of

          • Except that they *haven't* handled it "just fine for years". If it had been, then "idiots" wouldn't have been going around saying that they needed to micromanage their device.

            No they literally have. "idiots" saying that people need to micromanage the device kind of says it all. Only "idiots" say that. The reality is there are plenty of articles out there and studies that show killing background apps actually consumes MORE battery due to the OS unloading it from cache as a result. But like a lot of IT things when dumbed down to a level where lifehacker.com will write a shitty article about it, actual logic does not apply.

            There are plenty of examples of random apps that run uncontrolled background processes that utterly destroy battery life.

            Yeah random apps do. Usually those loaded with malware. Pre

    • It has tons of processes that are indecipherable. How does anybody manage all of that?

      Easy answer. You don't. The fact that you even see the tons of processes means that you are not using the OS, you ARE the OS. Android will run perfectly fine with you ever seeing any process referenced which you didn't specifically install. This includes the topic at hand which is about apps being killed and nothing to do with indecipherable background processes that users never see.

  • i have a Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus and i disabled facebook, and a few other non-essential things i dont use, and on top of that when i dont need to use a full featured smartphone i set the battery saver to maximum which disabled everything except for phone & text, which makes most the apps inaccessible and that is fine with me most the time, i can always turn the battery saver mode off when i need to use a full featured phone, then switch back to max battery saver mode when i am done

  • Moto seems to be good (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @11:23AM (#57959370) Journal
    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.

    • 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/ [android.com] they are by far the manufacturer with the largest number of models, 7 (while most are missing or have one

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

      Microsoft sold Nokia a few years ago.

    • My Moto X4 does something similar tho... the camera app will forcibly kill ALL other apps. Including the app that launched the camera! So if I want to attach a picture to a text, I click add, choose the camera, and then when I take a picture, it drops back to my launcher. And that even takes a second or two to load. So then my text is gone.

    • That's funny! Nokia and microsoft split back in 2014/2015 -- Nokia phones are now "Android One" android phones.

  • So what do we want? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @11:33AM (#57959456)

    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?

  • They have to add their bloat and junk, most of the time doing it poorly to boot. Samsung is the prime example - it would seem that the Samsung software people do their best to ruin the Samsung hardware. Which is one of the reasons why I am not likely to ever buy a Samsung phone, and also why I have advised those in my circle not to buy a Samsung phone.

  • Android ist running into the same problems... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by joh ( 27088 ) on Monday January 14, 2019 @12:51PM (#57960066)

    ...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.

    • ...that Apple tried to avoid to begin with in iOS

      They also tried to avoid copy and paste, and any form of multitasking. That doesn't make it right.

      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.

      Except that's not the issue here. There are many legitimate reasons to have to run in the background. There's also the reality that Android manages this just fine. The problem is the users thinking because they see something they expect that there is automatically a drain on their system. Then after spending an entire day in a low service zone, or staring at their own screen they see their battery hasn't laste

    • ...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.

      I remember the days of PocketPC where Microsoft wrestled with the same issue.

      They allows pretty much everything to run in the background - which was not helped by the fact that the close button didn't actually close an app. Instead the operating system was supposed to "int

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Yeah, these days the first thing I look at when deciding on a new phone is whether or not the bootloader can be unlocked. I don't care how good every other aspect of the phone is; if I can't unlock the bootloader, I'm not interested.

  • I'd like to be able to keep my KeePass database handy when it's needed without having to stop and waste half a minute regaining access to it, but Android insists on randomly killing the app in the background when it's doing nothing but occasionally verifying database sync. There's nothing explicit, I get no notification, it just quietly gets terminated. The author has acknowledged the problem from a usability standpoint, but apparently can do nothing to prevent it.

    There should - MUST - be a way for me to

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