Hello There. I am writing to inform you of an alarming trend and a request.
Because Android is an open OS, app developers are free do develop apps in any way they want. Unfortunately, it has come to my attention that most app developers take absolutely zero care in developing apps for good battery life. This is one of the reasons Android handsets get much shorter battery life even though they use the same exact chips as other phones such as iPhone, blackberry, etc. The MAJOR problem isn't cpu usage, but data usage. 3G radios are being turned on literally hundreds of times an hour! What's worse is that this is happening even with apps that use the C2DM push notification service from Google. I have done a real world test with a network analyzer. You can do it , too. Just download "Shark for root" and "Shark reader" from android market. Turn it on and notice how your average android device, even when seemingly doing nothing, is constantly polling the network: - Words With Friends (Wildly Popular): By default checks for new moves EVERY 5 MINUTES! - Official Twitter App, Tweetdeck: Check for new tweets every 15 minutes, BY DEFAULT. - Tweetcaster from Handmark: Checks for new tweets every 3 minutes(!) by default! - BeejiveIM polls network and downloads packets at least once a minute. This is an app that supposedly has push notifications. - Fring: Uses a third party push notifications that is also constantly downloading packets - FOX news: Uses an alert system that is on by default and doesn't even seem to be push. Noticed activity dozens of times an hour. This is just a VERY short list to illustrate my point. Notice how some of the apps are wildly popular? It's not hard for an average user to have ALL these apps installed. Imagine what all that collective polling is doing to their batteries... App developers don't seem to mind the impact of such settings on possibly millions of people's handsets. This is quite a big deal. As long as their apps work.. Why bother? The fact is, these apps are killing a LOT of peoples batteries. Really high defaults also punish the average users who won't bother going to settings menu or simply don't know the effect of such a frequent poll on the battery. My request is, Google, you strive for innovation and customer satisfaction.. Please do something about it. But don't just implement a fix on the next version of Android. Do it now. Require this from developers. Actively talk to them. Please realize this is something really important. There are millions of Android users who need their phones for mission critical jobs, and just don't know why they can't make through a day without an empty battery.... And not even using the damn thing. Thanks Eli -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
