Samsung Becomes the First To Address the Killing of Background Mechanism of Apps in Android 14

On May 6th, according to foreign technology media 9to5Google, Samsung and Google have collaborated to address the inconsistency in “foreground services and background work” across devices in the Android 14 system. The aim is to reduce the frequency of killing background apps in OneUI 6.0.

Some OEMs have taken drastic measures to improve battery life by killing background apps, resulting in apps not being kept running in the background for extended periods of time. This has led to end users blaming developers for poor experiences.

Each OEM manufacturer customizes the frequency of killing background applications, making it difficult for application developers to adapt and optimize according to different devices.

Google hopes to fix this problem in the Android 14 system and make it easier for developers to create applications that run consistently on different Android devices. Google’s goal is to achieve this through deeper partnerships with Android hardware manufacturers to ensure predictable and consistent support for APIs that work behind the scenes across the ecosystem.

Samsung has become the first partner to join the program, and applications running on OneUI 6.0 can ensure that foreground services work as expected as long as they are developed according to Android’s new foreground service API policy.

Google has introduced three changes in Android 14 to address these consistency challenges. These changes include declaring the type of foreground service and the requested permission of the specified type in application development, introducing data transfer job types that can be manipulated by the user leveraging the constraints of the JobScheduler (such as network constraints, such as unmetered WiFi), and a new Google Play policy that ensures proper use of foreground services and user-initiated data transfer jobs.