Android Question Creating Long time running apps in background

[billyn_hk]

Does anyone happen to know how to create a long run background service like whatsapp ?

 

[JohnK]

You have to remember that you and your app are a "guest" on the Android system, at the discretion of the "Android Overlord". Your app is no more important than the latest "Flappy Bird" clone. Unless...

You will probably need a rooted phone, with super user installed. I have used the following in scripts, but never through B4A, so there may be an Android/Java interface as well, I just haven't checked.

Look into setting your OOM value and Renicing your process id; careful, the values are in reverse order ie lower means higher... for at least one of them and also go into -ve for OOM I think. I previously had a phone with only 512mb ram and setting these values to the extreme did a pretty good job of limiting Androids ability to randomly kill processes. In my case, it would previously kill my background music player while I was using Navigation (Google Maps)

But even with the above, i don't think you will get around a "Force Stop" in Settings/Apps

 

[marcick]

Dose not StartServiceAt work fine ?

 

[billyn_hk]

Dose not StartServiceAt work fine ?

yes, it will not start if OS were to kill the app upon system resource tight.

 

[marcick]

Hope not to misunderstand your question.
If each time the service is started you add a StartServiceAt, the service should restart again after specified time, also if the OS kill the app.
StartServiceAT is based on alarm timer of the device, the OS can't kill that.

 

[billyn_hk]

you are correct.
But some mobile phone manufacturer have modification on their own Rom.
StartServiceAt will not be called if the app was killed by OS on this situation.

 

[marcick]

Strange, shouldn't happen I think, but wait comments of some experts.

 

[billyn_hk]

thanks marcick. everyone are so nice here.

 

[DonManfred]

StartServiceAt will not be called if the app was killed by OS on this situation.

If the App is terminated manually by the user (with a taskmanager for example) it won´t restart the service unless the user manually started your app again.

 

[JohnK]

and never forget that on a phone, a battery could run out of charge or the user can reboot at any time.