Submitted as http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=9663:
On the Incredible (and possibly other devices) the process is always put in the background scheduling group when it doesn't have a visible activity, even though the app's service has called startForeground(). This causes it to get a restricted amount of CPU time, which is crippling for applications that need more CPU while running in the background. For example, in our application, MixZing Media Player, our service plays music using AudioTrack and does signal processing such as equalization. This fairly CPU-intensive task works fine on other devices such as the Droid, and on the Incredible when the activity is in the foreground, but when the user backgrounds the app the audio starts stuttering and is basically unusable. As a result, our thousands of users on the Incredible won't be able to use our equalizer function. The attached project demonstrates the problem. It starts a service which calls startForeground() with a Notification. It then prints out the value of its scheduling group, which is "/" when it's visible. If you then hit the Home button the app prints out the scheduling group again, which on other devices is still "/" but on the Incredible is "/ bg_non_interactive". Further, if you look at "dumpsys activity" while the app has no visible activities you'll see "foregroundServices=false" and "curSchedGroup=1". On another device, e.g. a Droid, it shows "foregroundServices=true" and "curSchedGroup=0". I can trace the startForeground() call in the debugger all the way to ActivityManagerNative.setServiceForeground() with the notification parameter being non-null, so it looks like the problem is in the ActivityManager or perhaps the scheduler itself; in any case it's not in the Java code. This is a very serious bug which will have a severe effect on any application trying to do relatively CPU-intensive tasks in the background. If there is any workaround that we can implement please let us know ASAP. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
