I work in a role where a bunch of Huawei devices have been deployed to non-technical end users for a particular business purpose (against my advice).
This doesn't surprise me in the slightest -- the overzealous and frankly capricious changes in their Android firmware are ridiculous and difficult to mitigate.
Sure, let's issue a comm. that says "everyone change this setting so your device will work properly". What level of adoption can be expected from that? (hint: not much)
The scenario listed here is exactly why we need to promote and support efforts toward open firmware for Android devices, or at the very least, don't compensate vendors/manufacturers that use the Android platform to slather crap across an OS that works fine without all the additional and superfluous BS.
Another clickbaity title not giving the whole story... "Huawei killing apps; devs blamed" would have been better. If a phone was crashing your apps and users blamed you (and rated your app as such), what would you do?
I trust the VLC team so I gave them the benefit of the doubt before even clicking, I completely agree. The title should reflect that this is in response to Huawei firmware changes.
I think the only other reasonable thing that could be done is automatically responding to the one star reviews. Maybe work with Google to remove the reviews, but these things take time and may not work. I have a hard time finding a problem with what the devs have done here.
Also, I believe developers on the Play Store can set flags for device compatibility anyway, no? Or is that limited to specs and OS version? It makes sense that if an application is known to not work properly on a given device, it might throw the "not compatible with your device" message on the app listing.
The fact that they still offer it as a direct download shows that they aren't solely trying to stop people from using it, but rather they know of the issues and don't want to claim full compatibility.
How much of this should be blamed on Google? iOS only allows certain types of apps to run in the background unfettered - audio, navigation, Bluetooth communications apps (like the Pebble) and third party calling apps. Other types of apps can be periodically awakened by the OS (background app refresh), but the OS decides how often they can be awaken based on the frequency of interaction and a few other heuristics. In low power mode, apps that do background app refresh don’t get CPU time(?) and you can control which apps allowed to run in the background.
This allows the OS to distinguish between apps that always need to work in the background and those that don’t. The only drawback is server type apps. While VLC will keep playing audio in the background, I don’t believe the http server that allows you to copy media over a web interface to your phone will work over an extended period of time unless you’re playing audio at the same time.
Huawei has massively cranked up the battery optimization to a degree much greater than what Google does. I listen music in the background all the time on my Pixel with zero issues. If I pause the music for ten minutes or so it gets killed. Google can always improve memory management but this one is definitely more on Huawei.
The issue with Android, is that Google never breaks backwards compatibility. Android also has improved security permissions but it’s voluntary for apps to adopt it.
That wasn’t meant as a knock against VLC at all. But it does say more about Huawei that they indiscriminately kill background apps without taking simple things into account like - is the app playing audio and is it being a good citizen.
It may not crash, but google does not preserve backwards compatibility. I just spent 2 weeks doing a GPS system only to find out that it doesn't work on Android Oreo + and I had to totally rewrite it. You can call my GPS idea a bad one, but you can't say that google preserves backwards compatibility. Background services have changed drastically and your old code simply doesn't execute on new versions.
No, Google regularly updates the minimum targetSdkVersion required for an app published to the Play Store. It maintains backwards compatibility for sideloaded apps.
All of it and even more. The Google Play search is abysmal, there is no way to filter out applications that require many strange permissions. Now all applications require any permission they can think of and ad networks are happy with that.
Wow, what a terrible strategy for saving battery. Let's just send our customers back to 2009, when you had to keep your Pandora app open so your music wouldn't stop.
Ha, I had the same problem on a Lenovo phone, except I knew it was not a VLC issue because the process-kill would happen with any app I would leave running in the background. The most annoying part was that even after tweaking the battery/power settings this would still happen. Lesson learnt, don't buy Lenovo.
I am observing the same "killing" of background service for Signal app too. Basically any app with a long-running session which you don't whitelist. And it seems that it whitelist the Spotify for example on its own. I don't think the blocking install by VLC team is the right way, communicating the issue to a user is a much more reasonable way. Look at Garmin Connect app, which had the same issue but they implemented notification and how-to disable management.
That is normal. An application that requires the background "foreground" service to run is obligated to display a notification and call an Android foreground service API in the service itself. Unless it is lower target SDK than 23 (number may be wrong).
Huawei adds a very aggressive background app killer, this means that apps like VLC and WhatsApp don't work in background. I have a low end Huawei device for testing purposes (hint hint), there is a setting to whitelist apps from huawei's appkiller but they get killed anyway.
This is on iOS but their app definitely went downhill pretty severely in the past year.
If any sort of bluetooth or background playback is involved, the previous playback position will almost always be lost. Video/audio in a playlist skips and don't play sequentially. Reordering items manually will have their order re-scrambled as soon as you start scrolling the item list in the playlist. Playing an item to completion even in foreground will show a random amount left on this item when you moved onto another item.
It's hard to say Huawei is exclusively to blame when their primary video playing features (including background playback) is already so buggy.
> This is on iOS but their app definitely went downhill pretty severely in the past year.
The VLC/iOS is getting a full rewrite, to be way more modern. (I can share screenshots if you want). So the transition is a bit difficult now, I agree, but it will be soon better.
> It's hard to say Huawei is exclusively to blame when their primary video playing features (including background playback) is already so buggy.
The code on iOS and Android is totally different. But Huawei is breaking all apps, including Google Photos or PodCast Addict. This is not VLC, but all apps that are affected.
Also on iOS, and I wonder if anyone else has experienced a weird bug. Open VLC, make sure it’s showing your videos as a grid, then drop your iPad about 3 feet onto a bed or other very soft surface (I am not responsible for you not picking a soft enough landing area). VLC gives me the “Report a bug” dialog box.
Onedrive on ios has a “shake to send feedback” but it can be disabled on the onedrive’s setings menu. I cant see the same on vlc and i couldnt reproduce the effect. maybe its the version you have? it may share some framework or library with this feature enabled by default (pure speculation i admit).
I completely agree with aggressive background killing, because too many apps are abusing their permissions and try every trick in the book to siphon user data at all times.
That being said, killing an app that is actively playing audio is not the best idea and an open source app with 100 million installs should probably be whitelisted anyway.
Someone was hacking into Nortel and stealing R&D, trade secrets, the hard work of the research division. That someone was in China. Soon after, a competitor named Huawei with a minimal R&D budget was selling very similar products at lower prices. It put Nortel out of business. My friends' parent all lost their jobs.
This is why I personally won't buy Huawei products.
This probably isn't the only thing that put Nortel out of business, but it saddens me that more Canadians aren't aware of that history. Huawei advertising during Hockey Night in Canada just makes my blood boil. It's nation-state-level trolling.
The connection to Huawei seems very tenuous. Is there any evidence of Huawei hacking Nortel? The link you shared is just an allegation of Chinese hacking.
A company I worked for was acquired by a huawei partner, and within a couple of months Huawei was selling a complete hardware and software copy of our product.
No, why would it be? It wasn’t produced by the partner, and was never authorized to be copied by anyone. It was straight up copied - source code and all - by Hauwei after their partner got access to our SVN repos.
China is objectively not playing by the same rules as the west currently. Chinese Nationals have been caught stealing tech multiple times. I worked at a company where an intern from china was caught trying to steal the entire database but failed only because our infrastructure was so shitty that it crashed when trying to export everything. It was just quietly swept under the rug because any sort of retaliation would have led to losing access to the Chinese market since the intern was a relative of some government official. These sort of behaviors make people angry.
Not to say that no one else has acted like this. The United States stole/forced the UK and other European powers to give over IP back when we were the rising star in the global market
I can't tell if you are a troll or legitimately hold beliefs that manage to piss off every side of this forum but I have seen you pop up all over the place on here lately.
If I can make a request, please include your reasoning on your future posts because I have been incapable of understanding the viewpoint that led to some of your comments
I am very clearly pro crypto, pro capitalism, pro china (and pro immigration, I almost forgot in my list of biases). I do not hide my thoughts. I do not mention my political opinions, because that has no place on HN.
I work on some complicated things, so in the daytime I enjoy breaks and I come here to discuss or share my thoughts.
I do not promote anything - no product, no company. I have raw opinions and I am not very PC. I do not mean to hurt anyone.
My reasoning for Huawei is that they make great products, but they are attacked left and right. I genuinely would have made the same choice- including limiting background applications.
I am almost certain that a lot of criticism is very misguided. If you need any proof, just read the comment where the demise of Nortel is blamed on Huawei. It is not me thinking that.
On the Huawei point, they are believed to have stolen IP from multiple companies. If you don't believe they have stolen anything that is one thing, but I don't know a pro capitalism view that is ok with stealing from your competitors which is where I think much of the dislike comes from
I have seen no real evidence of that. I would actually prefer if they did, as contempt for property rights helped many countries and companies become competitive. And there are many economists with a dislike of intellectual property, mostly austrians, who are also fiercly pro capitalism.
It is also in line with what many say for startups: ideas do not count, only the execution.
I hope this answers your questions about me. I am here to share ideas, and I am happy to explain my reasoning if needed.
Whether or not the government should be granting monopolies in the form of IP and whether it's fine to violate property rights in a capitalist system, are two different questions
I can see your other viewpoints but I do not understand how your seeming desire for no laws is based in capitalism. Property rights and rule of law are basic necessities for capitalism
extracts: "Like many libertarians, I initially assumed intellectual property (IP) was a legitimate type of property right. But I had misgivings from the start: there was just something too utilitarian..."
I think you're conflating two points. I know many, capitalistic, people believe that IP should not exist.
However it does currently exist as property of people. If property rights are not respected then capitalism falls apart as you'd have land and capital stolen and kept by whoever could bring the most force
I did. I love Huawei phone because they do not let programs eat cpu in the background - I like windows phone who did the same
I see the article and the tweet that caused it as a cheap shot against Huawei, motivated by some irrational anger that affects even free software developers.
I have no idea how this can be framed as a slight against Huawei. Huawei decided to have aggressive battery management (which to many is a good thing) to the detriment of apps that need to continue to run in the background.
If this is causing a significant loss of rating for the app, they are well within their rights to blacklist installs from the play store for those devices. Those users can still install the app via the APK (which is admittedly a poorer experience).
Edit: Also I'm not sure where your'e getting the "West hates Huawei so much" vibe from. They've done a few things that have been unpopular from the POV of the Android community at large, such as no longer allowing unlocking of their devices this week, but I would say their bigger issue in the West is that they are simply not marketed much.
1996 you're wrong on "West hates Huawei so much". American might not have a great opinion of the brand but VLC is French project and I can tell you Huawei is popular in France. USA doesn't represent the whole West, just part of it.
My friends from the mainland call these people “愤青”, basically young extremely patriotic men.
Basically any sleight against China and they’ll come in droves, screeching people down and proclaiming the eternal glory of the lunar kingdom (and its subsidiaries).
Fortunately, as this thread shows, English language forums only get one or two of these crazies at a time.
Until the findings of that report have been reversed, Huawai will continue to find the US Government hostile to their actions, and willing to put up roadblocks wherever they can to stop Huawai's entry into the US market.
So because one author on one French site wrote one article that has a slightly negative title but otherwise neutral content, suddenly the whole country dislikes the company?
It's great for responsiveness and battery life mostly, but doing it unilaterally as one vendor among many makes things break in weird ways. Windows phone had apis and permissions for background audio, that would let the app run (with a much lower memory quota), but I don't think Android has that, so apps that need to do that may not be able to inform the system.
Tweet says users can download apk so it's just they can't get it off Google Play. Users basically will get a message it's not compatible with their device hence they can't review the app.
It is a blacklist at the Google Play level, not at the apk level. The devices are supported, as evidenced by the advice to download the apk directly.
There are several ways to blacklist device:
- via Google Play, you have a list of all the device your apk is supposed to support. You can blacklist some of them, which won't be able to install the app, despite being otherwise supported
- at the apk level (Android Manifest), by requiring hardware capability (for example, a camera, a phone, screen size ...) but not by specific model
- obviously, you can detect the model after install and do a custom blacklist that prevent the user from actually using the app
VLC only used the first method, as a way to avoid those models from reviewing the app, because they were leaving disproportionate negative reviews.
Just code it right ? I don't find those negative reviews on other background music players like spotify, so I imply that they work fine on those devices. I don't think they pushed an update just for two devices, I think it just worked with huaweis background killing. If VLC is not working on those devices, they deserve the negative reviews.
Rather than blacklist, I think a better approach is for VLC app to inform Huawei users about its quirky behavior on first run after installation and after every update. That way, Huawei users are unlikely to take the trouble of leaving a low rating for an app, and are better informed to choose a device next time. If background audio is something you can't do without, don't choose Huawei - that should be the messaging. That can help kick the company too into improving its firmware.
On a different - but related note - Huawei recently announced that they won't provide bootloader unlocking anymore for any device[1]. Although I own an Honor and like its hardware and software, I think Huawei is setting itself up to become an increasingly "bad player" in the device space in future. I'm wary of buying a Huawei again.
Could just as easily be counter productive. Some user who's just spent a few hundred on a new Huawei installs VLC and all their other old apps. VLC tells them their choice will lead to strange behaviour. User leaves 1 star review that VLC told them their new phone was crap.
Users barely read error messages and dialogues so there's no scope for any nuance in explaining and informing.
Blocking seems the only rational approach to take. Those who can understand sideloading can likely decide if they want VLC warts and all on their Huawei.
You aren't kidding. Users are shitty and capricious in the mobile space (sometimes everywhere, but very frequently the mobile space). I've had users leave one-star reviews for my mobile app--which controls OBS, a video mixer--with the reason "it works for 20 minutes [ed.: there is a very visible timer the entire time] and then stops [ed.: it goes readonly, it doesn't kill a stream or recording] and asks you to pay [ed.: five whole dollars]."
This doesn't surprise me in the slightest -- the overzealous and frankly capricious changes in their Android firmware are ridiculous and difficult to mitigate.
Sure, let's issue a comm. that says "everyone change this setting so your device will work properly". What level of adoption can be expected from that? (hint: not much)
The scenario listed here is exactly why we need to promote and support efforts toward open firmware for Android devices, or at the very least, don't compensate vendors/manufacturers that use the Android platform to slather crap across an OS that works fine without all the additional and superfluous BS.