If you're a Windows Phone developer, there's a cool change coming in Windows 10 Mobile that will allow you to maintain better network connections when your app is suspended. As detailed by an admin on the WPDev Uservoice page, Windows 10 Mobile will allow an app to transfer its sockets to the OS when suspended. From the WPDev UserVoice:
"In Win10 we are introducing a new socket functionality that will allow an application to transfer its socket(s) to the OS when in background or terminated and have the OS brokering the sockets for the application."
Since apps can't run in the background on Windows Phones, this essentially means that end users should see less of a delay in receiving notifications from apps that take advantage of this new functionality.
If you're a Windows Phone developer, feel free to let us know what you think of this change in the comments below.
Source: WPDev UserVoice Thanks for the tip, Matt!
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Windows 10 Mobile will be better at handling network activity for suspended apps
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Amazing
As a developer, the way Windows Phone 8.1 works is that when an app is taken out of the main view or the phone is turned off the app can only use the processor on a regular period. The minimum period for short tasks is every 30 minutes. So if the app checked the server and you had no messages and message comes in immediately after checking it could be 29 m and 59 s before app will check to see if there is a new message.
They way Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp work is that they use Windows Notification. With Windows Notification the Facebook Server, for example, will send an immediate notification to your phone only that you have a new message. The app will then immediately retrieve the the message and display it in the app or activate an notification on your phone that it was recieved.
With this new feature on Windows Phone apps like Tinder which do not have notifications from the Tinder server because it is a 3rd party app should be able to check the Tinder server more often to see if you have an new message. This will probably come at a cost of some battery life however, but if the OS batches network requests together the battery hit may not be too bad.
Does this mean that SmartGlass might someday resume a lot faster?
waiting for windows 10 mobile as soon as possible (lumia 730 owner)
So will it still take half a day to upload 30mbs of files to One Drive if I decide only to turn on my screen to check my text messages?
When windows 10 come for mobile?
Excellent, I have been waiting for this feature, I am sure. Now can someone translate the article to English for me?
Opera mini browser can run background
There are no easy/obvious solutions to the low energy, limited resources situation with phones. I have my WP80 app set to fast-resume so that it'll be preserved in memory rather than always be terminated when leaving the foreground, which makes it much smoother in usage. I think this is the default for WP81+ apps. You might ask, "why suspend or terminate apps at all"? Well, if my app is using the internet to retrieve data, that requires at least one of the high power radios in the phone to be turned on, which consumes energy and drains the battery. Same goes for an app using GPS location or other phone hardware. Add to that the fact that users switch away from apps all the time and don't return to them for extended periods of time (how many apps show up in your task switcher UI?) and you can see how the battery would be used up quickly without aggressively suspending/terminating apps.
You can't simply let users decide which apps are "special" and should remain fully powered up in the background because they (users) will say "yes" for everything, which will kill the battery. I think the functionality should be there but come with big red warnings about using it -- then combine that with an easy way for users to see which apps are using the most energy. That way, users won't think they have a crappy phone with poor battery life. They'll be able to see exactly why their battery is draining fast and remove the privileges from the power-hungry apps.
Here's hoping this will pave the way for a native SIP client for Windows 10 mobile phones. It's one of the features I badly need in WP.
If this fixes Facebook's Messenger app I'm all for it, I hate getting notifications that I've got a message then having to wait 2 minutes whilst the app launches and catches up.
I guess this justify the delay on getting notifications on whatsapp or vibe. ..
How about online (real time) features? It says for suspended apps but lately I've been playing this game called Crime Coast and for it I need a connection all time, so it happens very often to me that it says "Dang it, we lost connection, reconnect now?" This is so annoying, because I'm not that far from the modem, it just happens that the little arrow that should be on the WiFi small icon (which means data transfer) is not there, appears and disappeares more often than it should. :(
Or is it my phone??
This is either your router/modem or your phone. As long as you have a connection, you should not be experiencing this
When the will the next build be released??
It's almost the end of the week
Waiting for wp10...
Why the hell Windows phone doesn't have background taking while rest of the world already had it before stone age
Bye bye battery.
Not necessarily. They can optimize it if they code things correctly. This isn't Android.
Posted via the Windows Central App for Android
You don't have to allow it you know
How to fix resuming in WP8.1: Settings>About>Reset your phone and do not restore backups(you can keep Sd card data)
Windows 10 Mobile: Settings >System>about>reset your phone. Same process as above.
Once completed, you'll have a fresh phone running the same software version. Your phone is not on the old is version don't worry. I did this in windows 10 and forgot what resuming.... was lol.
Good for you but it doesn't work every time. It has nothing to do with the article, by the way
Precisely
Posted via the Windows Central App for Android
Windows phone doesn't have a application lock....plz give inbuilt
Afaik even the one in android is useless, you can easily just deactivate it from the settings and then just access any app you want....
Application lock is present, the developer needs to implement it, one drive, dropbox, moliplayer all have them.
They need to focus on this issue. Don't release a quick fix..! Do it right one time. Theirs tons of other issues to focus on as well. But get the OS near perfect.
When is the windows 10 for mobiles coming
Late October/November
Can we expect notification symbol on notification bar while in downloading??
I would prefer not to restrict this behaviour to just sockets, but make it more of a background tasks style execution, where I can execute any code I want - I might want to interact with the GPS, for example which is not a network API, but is often done alongside net calls. This is what the IBackgroundTask is doing already (and also the previous API in Silverlight) - they are already throttled for CPU time and memory so that would still apply - but I could hand a method over to the OS and say 'run this' when the app exits/suspends or whatever, rather than this being handled purely for sockets - that is not a generic solution.
This is a good article about websockets: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/websockets/basics/ it also describes some use cases.
"Since apps can't run in the background on Windows Phones"- I thought background running of apps came with WP 8.
Apps are suspended in background..not in a running state..in case of windows phone 7 to 8.1
Foreground part of the app is suspended, background part can run.
Since the app is not in foreground it is correct to stop running the foreground part, too bad the article was written with no clue on the matter at hand :)
There's foregroung, under lockscreen, and background (suspended). The "app can run in background" mode is managed by background agents to get/send data from/to the internet and/or update live tiles. There are background agents for audio playback too.
Background agents can run even if the app is completely terminated or hasn't even been started once since the phone boot.
It's the correct way to do it but it's not perfectly implemented by microsoft, or one can go full lag and battery drain with android, their choice
Anyway bing it, it's well documented
Great promising news
Does anyone know why the "resuming" happens... Even when going back to start screen sometimes. Using Lumia 1020. Them fixing this is one of the things giving me hope for Windows 10Mobile. Never see this on other os. Even my wife's 3 year old iphone4
Are you on windows 10 mobile? Did you perform a hard reset after upgrade? ... If not you should, but wait for the new build, update, then reset.
Sounds cool.....
But what about battery life, does it effect that?
Take that on faith. Since there has been no new build for nearly a month.
It's really cool!
When WP10 will Roll out... Can't wait
Soon ™
To all Indians starting their comments with when or wen. Try saying "when will"... Not wen in India
We should have the option to choose what apps run in the background, essential for downloads from a browser, torrents, etc
Good
Expected things coming true,no limit for downloads,background downloading,charge when it is in power off..iam really happy with this....
What about constant vibration during calls? And no vibrations either for alarms :|
Ask on the insiders page thingie
This is great, some apps heavily depend on sockets.
Does this mean....you all don't read the article and comments before commenting yourself??? Lol...anyone count the number of times "does this mean" was said?
Lol. It was funny to see that. But I dont think the article was clear on how this affects or benefits every day users
It's about time, I can say I am really sick and tired of having to set my phone to never turn off when downloading a file.
Should have done this at day 0, too late Microsoft
Does that mean background downloading is possible??!!..even if app is minimized??
Yes!
Background downloading is already possible. It just means you remain connected to server/peer etc when app hibernates. It doesn't mean extra background tasks allowes.
Bottom-line, any benefits for consumers?? Do we still see the annoying Resuming and Reloading nonsense?? When can windows phone be as powerful as its competitors?
If W10 still has resuming I'm ditching this platform
Bye
Me too. I want background tasks so badly. And I hate Loading... Resuming... Screens.
On the 520 still with resuming or loading
Theoretically, you can now have a working IRC-client, torrents & other background downloads, etc. basically "anything" that requires constant communication.
means skype wont reconnect each time I switch back to it
How about mobile hotspot not working when phone is locked.
Haha it should be fixed soon :D
I use hotspot over a bluetooth connection. It works better than over wifi
Yea, except you can't shared that connection with another Windows mobile
Or what app if use the web browser and lock display?
WiFi hotspot works fine under lock screen as long as there is some device continuously connected to it. It turns off automatically when no device is connected to a hotspot for a while. It depends on device connectivity and not background/foreground functionality.
I second this! I have absolutely no issues with wifi hotspot under lock screen and I use it everytime! WP8.1. Please, do us a favor researching before posting! ; )
I thought apps could run in the background on windows phone
They can't, they'll run for ~5seconds before shutting execution, but will remain in the memory until that memory is needed for something else.
You have IBackgroundTask-s for a reason, you can create background tasks of various types and they are subject to certain policies (enforced by the OS) depending on the type of task you are running.
You also have a Notification Service provided by Windows itself to receive notifications.
This article is bad, the comments are ignorant (as in someone that ignores, not an insult). Everything on this page is so wrong and misleading.
IBackgroundTasks are quite limited, but do allow some action to be taken in response to some events, in the background.
There are many kind of IBackgroundtasks, many of them have been added since 8.1
One of my apps has a realtime background task running for virtually for infinite time as it reads sensors so what you write is incorrect.
Since 8.1 devs do not have excuses, almost everything can be done one way or the other.
Microsoft really needs to step up and start fixing the mobile platform. All of the crapola like this should have been ironed out a long time ago. There is no longer a reason acceptable for the phone to have any less features available for it than what is available on the other platforms.
The longer they screw around the harder it will be to get parity with the rest.
Posted via the Windows Central App for Android
What feature is win 10 missing that's that big of a deal I've used ios and android and still haven't found anything I can do with them os'S I can't do with windows phone 8.1 or windows 10. And window 10 added a bunch of new features at that. Hell on wp and windows 10 I can run emulators something you can do on Android but can't with iOS unless jail broken witch most of the casual isheep don't do. You also have to understand that windows 1o has features that android and ios don't mainly continuum not only for tablets and 2-1s but for phones to. Can you turn your iPhone or galaxy into a pc well guess what when I get my new flagship windows 10 phone I will be able to so as much as your argument might be relivent to your needs for most windows 10 and windows phone 8.1 will be just as feature complete. As android or ios
I guess you never used WM...
He never did! He even never used Windows Phone productively. How can a phone from the maker of "Office" and other productivity tools be not able to send a common PDF or Office attachments? Why do I need to send a OneDrive link - which by the way in most cases doesn't open on the partner's System - to send a common PDF or Word or any other attachment except pictures in an email? Pathetic! The reason I have stayed with Windows is because I hate Google, and dislike Apple's pricing and gagging. I am also fed up of this polycarbonate bodies. Dear Microsoft, sex sells. Make a damned sexy phone with a functional OS.
U can attach any file to email in windows phone 8.1 . Use files and share via email..! :)
Unless it's a email reply (on 8.1)
Very true!
Lol!
Yea hey! Haha
New build tomorrow. I'm calling it now.
Not this week.. Next week
You got my hopes up........
Windows 10 mobile seems to really fix every fucking missing software thingie , damn ! This is unreal !
Remember?
8.0 was where the core for a responsible OS started.
8.1 focused on adding much needed features
And, 10 is to focus on the details from here on out...
If they could update core features through App store like Windows 10, that would be nice.
They can on Windows 10 :)
They can
Skype sucks, I cannot receive a call if I don't have the app running... WTF!
Yeah.. I had this problem for most of the times on my 625, but somehow, my 640 doesn't have thia issue. Skype works normally, yes it is slow, but I reeive calls normaly..
Too little too late
SMDH... That's such a pointless comment, IMO.
So, is W10 TLTL❔ Really..
yeah, I think that was a pointless comment, we do all think that it's better than never, right?
Not really, I'm happy with never. I'd rather WP8.1 start getting apps. A new OS is just a polished turd.
W10 sucks. It's buggy and a backwards step from W8.1
Buggy? Yes, but it's being ironed out with the recent (and maybe future) updates, but NOT backwards steps from Windows 8.1.
Proof? Look, Start menu that people wanted it back, which is now way improved with Live Tiles. Maybe less ergonomic in Tablet Mode, but, it's just a beginning, man.
Yeah Notifications suck on windows... Hope it gets better.
Well, if you've been using the TP for some time then you might have forgotten how RELATIVELY reliable notifications are in WP8.1... Lol.
If Microsoft wants to make win 10 best for mobiles they have a long long way to go to bring the os on par with android or even ios , I'm a big fan of windows but lately I'm getting bored of their less interest towards mobile os. Only two updates for the preview in the last few months
What features do they need? iOS has bunch of missing features too.
You must've missed a few then
Add services like Windows (and Android) has had forever and LET THE USER decide how they want to spend their battery.
Yes this
Agreed.
I always wanted this in windows 10 mobile! But unfortunately android is the windows in smartphone industry.
Yeah, the Windows m.e.
They've certainly got a lot of work to do on mobile. Being the best multitasking desktop OS and not even able to run app in background in mobile. Not cool
So torrex among other apps will have will have true background downloading support?
Torrex doesn't even work in the foreground at the moment lol
LMAO.
wptorrent is the best. Way better than torrex.
Does this also mean the interval for notifications is real-time or still a minimum of 15 mins?
its been once every minute since 8.1
Not really - the once every minute is a queued mechanism where you must prepare what will be done in that minute ahead of time, within the actual background task which is only every 15 minutes. Put another way - every 15 minutes you can run code that will do anything; every 1 minute is merely a lightweight rendering.
Does this mean??? Lol too funny
Lol I notice it now !
I literally lmao... I guess you can call it a fart (?
the problem is that it was hard to gleam the practical impact based off the article
Do you guys even use WP? Or this is a feature that wasn't needed at all?
Lol was gonna say the same thing
Bring the dam preview!!!
Wait, Windows Phone doesn't let apps run in the background? WTF? Isn't that basic function of a smart phone today?
I'm pretty sure you can do some background code execution but it's pretty limited...
Considering one of the things Windows has stood for is doing multiple things at once, yeah it's weird.
Nope. Apps utilize a set of tools to allow certain functions of an app to maintain specific controls. For example, media playback. This is how it's accomplished in most mobile operating systems. Otherwise a process could run wild and drain your battery without you realizing until it's too late.
Like it used to happen in Symbian.. The phone would run as many apps in the background, then would start slowing down.. The OS eventually killed a few apps itself, then the phone would randomly reboot itself..
I miss webOS for this.
Me too
It depends on the kind of app and the function it intends. A mobile device has many more resource limitations compared to a traditional PC so it makes no sense to have every app running in the background. iOS and Windows are pretty much on par with each other in this regard. Nothing new about it.
It's how the Android and iOS work as well, although for Android you can create Services to run in the background.
Nope
Thats pic make me hope other news XD
Does this mean we can upload or download even after leaving the app??
I was having the same question!
This is awesome. This way apps like TeamViewer can maintain a connection theoretically while in the BG. I also have an app which is a remote control for RED cameras. If you minimized the app it was in danger of disconnecting and requiring a re-negotiation with the camera to regain control.
Maybe the Xbox 360 app wont take 60seconds to connect when you switch back to it..
Will we finally see the end of "Resuming..." ?
I don't think so
Yes I hope no more resuming...
Just turn of the phone.. Wallah.. No more resuming!
Zzz
That would appreciate bye the resuming thing
Resuming is pretty much non-existent on W10M compared to WP8.1, although there's still time to improve.
Yes because it is now "Loading"
This is one main reason I'm not recommending Windows Phone to my friends! Apps are always either loading, resuming or crashing. Soft reset only solves the problem momentarily.
what, are you using 512MB device?
Even for 1gb ram devices, every fucking app resumes on my 730. Sometimes I feel ashamed to even use it
Thinking too much of what people think about you if they knew you used a WP Device?
In the 820 with skype occurs the resuming but sometimes crash the app
Just do a hard reset, it's gonna be fine after
I'm using 1020 which has 2 GB ram and I face this issue. :|
Technically the extra 1 Gb is only dedicated for your camera performance in 1020 so you have only 1 Gb available.
And more than the RAM, i find that quad core phones work better than the dual core ones..
This. My old Ativ S was resuming much more than my 735.
1520 and I have the issue as well. Don't know what mobile are you using.
If he is using 512 mb device, it's not his fault.
Remember what Microsoft was saying till recently, we have built a OS which will not need higher specs.
mmmm had some resuming on 920, never saw resuming on 930 so I guess it is all about phone performance. And if the coder puts tons of code @resume-time it is not an OS fault.
universal apps dont resume... try the apps that have an icon of a mobile and a tablet... those apps dont resume.
This won't address that, but at least for Universal apps, the issue should be.. less of an issue.
You people still don't get it, do ya? Resuming is nothing but reopening the app and taking you where you were, sometimes this function does not work Since most of the apps will be closed on suspend. That means no real multitasking. Very far from Symbian, so far from it, i can't understand how could my n8 multitask more then 12 apps in real time (no resuming, no crapload) with just 680 mhz cpu and 256 mb RAM and this 1020 can't multitask one. And what i've noticed is that is not even able to suspend more then 7 apps, when you open the 8th, even if is just another ie windows, it will close something from what was suspended. It is unbelieveble how can this new systems on the market even compare them selves with Symbian, they are not even close to it's league. A symbian device with this kind of spects i have in 1020 would be a rocket on steroids multitasking 100 apps with ease and still being able to work normaly. The burning platform? Well, a burned platform by the hands of MS and eaten by wannabes like Android and IOS. Allot of the people have no ideea what Symbian was, and was able to do and it still is, thinking this new systems are superior. Now that's a shame! And cause of this, companies sell unfinished systems at greater prices bragging about how good they are when, in fact, they are quite mediocre in front of the old smartphones capabilities, quite much.
Microsoft suspends the apps and resume them just to save the battery..its not difficult for them to implement multi tasking like symbian had...But jst to save battery, WP suspends the app..
So windows phone should have a better battery life than others which isn't the case.
My 1520 completely disagrees.
It absolutely has better battery life... My 8X will last 2-3 days with normal use, and it only has a 1800mAh battery.
Give me 1 to 2 hours less battery backup on my 2500mAh device, but please don't stop TRUE multitasking.....
Then why not start at home by make msft apps not get suspended? Also Symbian works nice in multitask I don't understand why Microsoft is playing with us, why not asked to Nokia how implement the notification bar, turn on and off WI fi without get opened the settings menu and why not asked how hell make multitask smooth in phones, my brother have an Nokia 808 and Symbian OS belle is nice and works smooth i can't believe that a giant as Microsoft just now noticed that shortcomings and the Europeans engineers of Nokia had those shortcomings solved before than Microsoft did, and we as blind fans start to celebrate stupid features added that already Symbian and even lagdroid had since the version 1
Exactly, everytime they add something, I am like, oh I had it in my C6 so long back!!
Went on vacation with nexus and S5 friends, I had almost twice the battery life on my 930 and I was using it much more than them. So as an end user microsoft solution is preferrable. For a tech-nerd I guess extreme multitasking is much more exciting :P
Even i want gud multi tasking in WP..let it consume some extra battery bt real time OS is what everyone wants!!
No it isn't. I like current implementation. Loading/resuming is usually pretty damn quick on my 640 running 10
OMG I never knew that I was unable to have more than 8 apps open at any one time, although this doesn't affect me that much, it feels as if I've got a weak phone in my grasp (930)
On win10 you can
Finally ! :D
Now I am waiting to "Upload in background" feature in most apps like WhatsApp and Facebook.
Great... Thanks dude.
It's cool. But I've followed software enough to know that lazy developers be lazy and blame everything on platform when it is infact their own laziness making them not make enough effort to make their apps feature rich, polished and smooth/fluid/fast.
Agreed
If the platform makes it unnecessarily difficult, it is not developer laziness.
If the platform makes it unnecessarily difficult then the developer is justified in complaing about the difficulty they had in implementing it but not justified in not implementing it at all.
Sound logic
Ehm, amen!
Does this mean I can download files through ie under lock screen now? Man do I need that!
Yes
Have you tried it? I've been downloading on IE under lockscreen. Mostly videos.
Yeah I have. Most recently, this morning. After few minutes of going under lock screen, the download pauses.
I haven't had any issues with it. Right now I'm downloading a 50 MB video just in case.
Update: Downloaded with no problems.
How long did it take to download that 50nb video? What I have noticed is that it stops after a few minutes. Maybe it downloaded before that?
It takes probably less than 5 minutes. I didn't have much attention. Well, it depends on your internet speed I guess :)
I've been downloading even bigger videos over 100 MB with no problems at all.
Oh, and by the way, I'm on WP 8.1 Update 1. I've been on W10M (twice) but I haven't tested downloading under lockscreen. I downgraded (twice) after using it for a while.
Also I think I used to download under lock screen as well . I'm not sure :P but right now it just wont.
Don't internet connections (Wi-Fi and cell data) turn off after a bit when the device is locked?
Mine (L1320) never does that, it's always connected. While it doesn't have the option in Wi-Fi settings to uncheck it, my HTC 8S does have that option. Go to Wi-Fi then Manage and you should see "Keep WiFi on when screen times out". Check that and you are good to go.
But IE is dead on Windows 10 mobile.. Right?
Yep. IE was available on 10 in the first few builds but they removed it now in favour of Edge.
Does that mean no more pending app in the store?
Will we get background downloading as well ??
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