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Urbandroid, the developers behind Sleep as Android, have suffered a lot of headaches from making their app work on a wide range of Android phones. Different manufacturers think they have great ideas when it comes to extending battery life. They usually do this by aggressively removing background apps, which can break the app’s functionality. Urbandroid even created a site called DontKillMyApp to track down and embarrass the worst criminals and point out how to fix these issues on different phones (if it can). Now Urbandroid is creating a new benchmarking tool to measure the performance of background apps on your own phone. Like the previous site, it is also called DontKillMyApp, and is now available in early access on the Play Store.
Screenshots of the application.
So far, using the app seems simple enough. Turn it on, and you’ll get some details about your phone, an explanation of why the app exists, and some troubleshooting solutions in case you run into issues with managing background apps on your phone. At the bottom is a large, obvious “START BENCHMARK” button. Touch it and you’ll be presented with the test durations – up to eight hours in one-hour increments. Touch one of them and a warning will appear not to charge the phone or use it while the test is running, as this can interfere with the normal administration of the background application. Tapping “OK” starts the test.
The persistent app notification and test data you get if you touch and stop it. (Note that this initial test result for a 3a was removed; pixels actually work much better.)
You will receive a persistent notification while the app runs your test in the background. Tapping it to end the test, you’ll get a report with a handful of technical measurements for the benchmark. (Remember: use can interfere with the benchmark if you want reproducible results.)
If you were expecting a bigger app with more details on memory management as a whole, this is not the case. Very simply, it is a point of reference. You can use it to easily assess if you’re having trouble with background apps and try more possible solutions while messing around with settings. The results may be a little difficult to decipher, but developers need to understand them. (However, most of this could go over the average user’s head.)
The test runs a foreground service and takes a wakelock, and then performs repetitive tasks on the main thread and thread executor at 10 second intervals. Then measure how many of those expected executions have actually been performed. It also sets an alarm (apparently sleep-free) for 8-minute intervals and also compares them to expectations. The bottom provides a 5-minute interval display that shows when parts of the test occurred so you can see when problems may have started. More benchmark additions are also planned, and there may eventually be a simpler starting figure for those who perform tests to understand more easily. Right now, the data is a bit tricky for the average user.
The share icon in the upper right allows you to send your scores to a results repository that the developer is collecting, plus other avenues in case you need to send someone your results.
I confess, we knew this app would come. I’ve been working alongside Urbandroid developer Petr Nalevka on a related story, and the app was created at least partially at our request. You can expect to see it referenced in the next coverage. Yesterday we were told that the app is still in progress, so there could be some issues or difficulties. Since it is explicitly labeled as an “early access” app in the Play Store, that is likely to be expected.
New icon, launched from early access
The app has been launched from early access with a handful of small changes like a new icon and some invisible adjustments to the benchmark itself that should lead to more accurate results.
The new app icon.
The early access change may take a while to implement in the Play Store.
