Nokia Android phones might have too aggressive background tasks manager *UPDATE*
An interesting site appeared online called “Don’t Kill My App” (dontkillmyapp.com), that gives Android vendors a “poop” score depending how aggressive their backgorund tasks manager is. Unfortunatelly for HMD, they were ranked as first, with the worst score of 5 out of 5.
The people behind the site did some investigation into Nokia phones’ aggressive memory management and they found out that a system app called “Battery Protection” (package: com.evenwell.powersaving.g3) exist that kills background activity of some apps after 20 minutes. Apps affected by this behaviour are sleeptracking apps, fitness apps, 3rd party alarm apps and other doing tasks in the backgorund. There is a fix for users to stop the “Battery Protection” app from working, while developers have to keep the screen on during the whole “background” task to be sure the task will be done. The user solution can be found on their site here.
This behaviour was also reported on the official Community Forum in a thread you can find here. The issue was also described on Reddit, where a user tried to track sleep, but the app was killed after 60 minutes. Third party alarm apps didn’t work and he was late for work. We rely much on our phones today, and when they fail, brand trust is lost.
We reached out to HMD for a comment and will update the article once it arrives.
UPDATE 15th January: HMD today responded to our request saying the matter is being investigated. Details here.
