VLC Blacklists Newer Huawei Devices To Combat Negative App Reviews (theverge.com) 78
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Some newer Huawei phones are actively being blocked from installing the open-source VLC media player app from Google Play. VLC's developers announced today that they're blacklisting some of Huawei's devices after unhappy users left too many one-star reviews for the app. But the negative reviews stem from a decision on Huawei's part and has nothing to do with VLC. The negative reviews are a result of Huawei's aggressive battery management and tendency to kill background apps, which directly affects VLC's background audio playback feature. Huawei users on VLC's forums are well aware of the issue. It's possible to manually disable these battery optimizations and have the app function properly in the background, but VLC claims that people often don't know how to do that, so they blame the app instead. The devices being blacklisted are the Huawei P8, P10, and P20. Users can still manually download the APK from VLC's website if they're interested in using the player.
Smart Decision (Score:3)
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
The smart users will go to Google and learn how to download the separate APK while also disabling the power saving features.
Re: Smart Decision (Score:1)
The smart users won't have Huawei devices.
Re: Smart Decision (Score:5, Insightful)
In that case the smart users won't have Samsung phones either, as the S8 does exactly the same thing. I installed Google SMS app, replacing Samsung's. It took me ages to figure out why SMS's were going missing. Turned out Samsung was killing it. They whitelist their own SMS app, of course.
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The smartest users avoid Android altogether.
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Of course, they use Apple's OS!
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Turned out Samsung was killing it. They whitelist their own SMS app, of course.
Samsung doesn't kill any app without telling you it did so, and giving you the option to white list it. Let me guess, you saw a notification and blocked it straight away so your phone wouldn't bug you with such pesky things?
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nope. [xda-developers.com]
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Cool a link to instructions to add exceptions manually. That doesn't change the fact that the OS gives you a notification the first time it wants to kill the app AND the opportunity to blacklist it before it happens.
Or maybe I just have the special non buggy version given only to shills on Slashdot S8. In which case you should get onboard since we clearly have much better phones.
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But once I figured
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Re: It is the app’s fault (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't fix the issue if the OS is doing it without forcefully editing the OS. Huawei phones have a built in "background app killer" app that is enabled by default. You'd have to have the right permissions and possibly be root to force an exception on your own, and any app that gets around it is basically acting like a virus.
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Actually, the second sentence should be part of the summary. This one:
Huawei phones have a built in "background app killer" app that is enabled by default.
Re: It is the app’s fault (Score:4, Insightful)
Except play music. I think some people install and use it for that feature alone.
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And this is slashdot, whose summaries are always complete, concise and accurate. There is zero reason to read the article.
Speaking of the article, it said this:
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VLC is a media player. And I like listening to my phone without draining battery by keeping the screen on.
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Re: It is the app’s fault (Score:1)
You obviously don't know users... They will just ignore it, either to lazy to read or to lazy to bother and will conveniently forget about it when they encounter the issue. vlc blocking installing is a perfectly valid response to deal with the issue for a small usergroup especially since there still a workaround. Anyone smart enough to mess with the phone configuration is smart enough to manual install the app as well.
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They can't query the OS to see what it is running on launch, and if it's Huawei's EMUI thing or whatever then show a box to the user saying that background playback won't work unless they do ${action}?
You're saying that just isn't possible? I have a feeling you're an idiot and haven't thought this through.
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Don't leave reviews if you are uninformed.
I am not disagreeing with you, but go and have a look at one star reviews on Google Play, a whole bunch of them consist of "Does not work. Help".
People are idiots.
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Because if the device itself it set to close background tasks, there is nothing an app developer can do. The OS will always have a higher level of run time then the apps, in other words.. the OS will always win.
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What makes you assume there's any way to do that programmatically? This is something being done by a pre-installed app on those phones. If it presents any sort of API, it's not documented.
All they know is the specific models with that mis-feature, so they blacklisted them.
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And they can't display dialogs with hyperlinks any more?
"We see you're running on a device model where a setting will need to be changed in order to enable background playback. More information about how to enable this can be found at [link] [X] don't show this again"
Oh hey look, problem solved without being draconian and boorishly stupid.
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The people complaining are exactly the ones that typically install software with OK,OK,OK,agree,OK,OK and don't even read the dialogs.
If you're not that sort of user, you can still sideload the APK directly from VLC's site and make the necessary change.
Not the only devices that kills background audio (Score:1)
My Nokia phone also kills background process after a couple minutes, but it does that on Google Play music as well as VLC, so I can't just blame VLC for it.
I have similar issues. (Score:3, Informative)
Sadly I have similar issues with PC software I write. The code works great, but the moron owning the computer doesn't know how to maintain their machine. Typically this is an issue with Windows users, but some OSX and noobie Linux users as well. In the end they hurt sales and fill customer support tickets. Yes "Dillon" I know you "have all the antivirus, windows, everything else updated", but Intel is still showing a video driver 7 years newer than the one currently on your shitty laptop. Please download and install it from them like I asked you to do 4 times...
It's just the way computing is these days. We let dumb asses access the network. You live with it. Lucky for VLC they have a way to block idiots.
Love my Mate 9 (Score:2)
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No, it has nothing to do with performance, here it is straight from the developer's mouth:
https://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=145236
Huawei devices are now forbidden to download VLC. We're fed up with their OS breaking VLC all the time.
Huawei basically kills VLC when the screen is shutting down. So that kills VLC when it plays audio in background.
This is childish behavior as a developer; there are many other (better-for-users) ways to deal with - including, if you detect those devices, sho
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but this petty behavior - randomly blocking long-time VLC fans like me from using it
They aren't doing that. They are blocking you from installing it from Google Play. If you download the APK, you can still install it.
With that said, I agree that a better solution would be to disable the feature in question on those devices until the user disables the killer.
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Oh, so I only have to go around the security protections that come from getting signed code from a trusted source, and instead sideload a package that could have been fucked with by unknown actors because the VLC team are being petty and petulant about this, and adopted a user-surly "solution" to the problem instead of documenting and taking 30 seconds to add a dialog on launch of the app on a device which exhibits this behavior.
What a wonderful app development team that in no way is overreacting to an exte
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If you download the APK
So I must jump through extra hoops, for no reason, because the developer wants to spite the vendor, due to an issue over a feature I don't even use ... no thank you, I don't jump through hoops for nobody. I'm a software developer and I don't make my users jump through unnecessary extra hoops on my own emotional wims. I'll just use alternatives.
As I said, I used to be a VLC fan, but this grates me.
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So I must jump through extra hoops, for no reason, because the developer wants to spite the vendor, due to an issue over a feature I don't even use ... no thank you, I don't jump through hoops for nobody.
Nonsense. You jump through hoops every day. If you didn't, you'd be in prison already. Government is quite intolerant of people who refuse hoop-jumping.
I'll just use alternatives.
Good luck finding an alternative which is anywhere near as good as VLC at doing what it does. I don't think there is one. You could use Kodi, and it would do all the same stuff, but it also has some liabilities like increased load time, resource consumption, and attack surface.
As I said, I used to be a VLC fan, but this grates me.
So you have one of the three affected devices? You know the affected devices behav
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There is no on device solution to the problem, though. When I had a Huawei, you could start by setting the device to use max power all the time, but that would only solve problems related to background services like reminders and other notifications. There was no way to prevent backgrounded apps from being killed.
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Then just say that to the user. "Your device doesn't support background playback due to a software decision made by Huawei. If this feature is important to you, contact them about supporting background media playback on their devices, and we'll happily enable support in a future version. [Got it]"
Just a quick reminder... (Score:4, Insightful)
VideoLAN's VLC player is the best media player around. Period. Nothing is even close. If you have a media file and want to play it, VLC Player does it well with a minimum of drama...and it's free.
I'm glad they're doing this. All they have is their reputation. They don't need it tarnished by malware-infested Chinese crap-phones running an OS designed to make personal privacy a quaint historical footnote.
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VLC is a piece of shit.
Yes, my business selling virus infected binary codecs to porn addicts has also suffered greatly because of their shitty project. Tell it like it is brother!
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100% agreed. VLC is by far the best media player for what i'm concerned. It just lack a decent UI.
Why not simply show a message "You are installing VLC on device XYZ; there are a few things you should know before using it on this specific device" ?
People are not always playing morons when they get the proper info.
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Did they try that and people blindly hit the ok button? Or are they just deciding that people are stupid?
Can't they just add a notification feature to the program so it stays active? I have had a few apps tell me I need to set that so it stays running. It's more clutter but it works.
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Because people will blindly hit the 'OK' button, have problems, and blame the software.
Why not just disable the feature that doesn't work properly on these phones, instead? Next to the disabled (greyed) option, print a message about a) how to fix it and b) who to complain to about it being a problem in the first place. (or just put a link to such info, of course.) TFS claims the problem is with the "background audio playback feature", not that the whole app doesn't work.
Re:Just a quick reminder... (Score:4, Interesting)
Opinion. VLC is far from the best media player.
It may be the player capable of playing the most formats independent of system codecs.
It may be the player with support for extensible features and filters
It may be the best player for transmitting video over the network.
I have it installed for those reasons alone, but I for one use it as a backup.
IMO the interface is crap, the file handling is crap, using it is infuriating, seeking accurately is a PITA, and I prefer MPC-HC in every way.
Though maybe once in a blue moon I find a file that doesn't play properly in MPC-HC, then I open it in VLC and usually find it broken enough to not continue trying with VLC as well.
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Actually, from my own Eye Tests (long-time video editing background), VLC's *screenshots* of identical frames appear better than MPC-HCs, but of course, you may only get 1 frame in 30 in VLC while playing...
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SMplayer works great on windows, give it a shot. Been using it for years. All the features of mplayer/mpv with a good interface.
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VideoLAN's VLC player is the best media player around. Period. Nothing is even close.
Kodi. Kodi is close. It does have a [much, much] longer load time, but that's because it has a lot more functionality. And in my experience, it plays more stuff successfully than VLC does.
Sounds reasonable (Score:3)
I had a Huawei and I experienced endless problems with background apps. I also develop mobile games.
If a device doesn't have enough RAM to run your program, you must block installation. If a device doesn't have the needed processing power to give a decent user experience, you should either rewrite the app to use different resources and lighter logic on low-end devices, or block those devices.
If the OS causes your users to have a bad experience, you should work around it or stop development and distribution for that OS. All the better of the app is open source, so someone else could pick up development targeting that platform without directly hurting your brand if their users have a bad experience.
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If a device doesn't have enough RAM to run your program, you must block installation.
Last time I wrote a program for a device that didn't have enough RAM I took a long hard look in the mirror rather than complaining about the device.
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the application life cycle is actually documented in Android's API documentation. Yes, really. Huawei does not control which apps are killed or not. Android does.
I don't think you checked the facts. Huawei's application background persistence logic so aggressive that I'm tempted to say the OS isn't even Android, strictly speaking. However, I checked the docs and it appears that although the OS shall kill apps when memory is needed, there is nothing that says the OS can't also kill an app for fun. But does any other Android variant kill background processes that are still in use when there's no memory shortage and no battery stress? None that I've tried.
In other terms (Score:2)
A Chinese thing (Score:2)
Seriously? Immature response. (Score:2)