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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.
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VLC Blacklists Newer Huawei Devices To Combat Negative App Reviews

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  • by DatbeDank ( 4580343 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @07:07PM (#57009964)

    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.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      The smart users won't have Huawei devices.

      • Re: Smart Decision (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ras ( 84108 ) <russell+slashdot ... stuart...id...au> on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:04PM (#57010306) Homepage

        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.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          The smartest users avoid Android altogether.

          • by Anonymous Coward

            Of course, they use Apple's OS!

        • 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?

          • by ras ( 84108 )

            Let me guess, you saw a notification and blocked it straight away so your phone wouldn't bug you with such pesky things?

            nope. [xda-developers.com]

            • 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.

              • I have the same experience; the battery utility tells you which apps it wants to "optimize," but in no way does it (or can it) tell you what that will do to app functionality, so it's extremely easy to click through and "optimize all" without thinking about it. This list-based power management probably needs to be done at the Android platform level, not through separate OEM applications, so user applications can report what functionality they'll lose if you disable background operation.

                But once I figured
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • 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.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @07:40PM (#57010036)

    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.

  • While I love my Mate 9 I did have to fiddle with the battery saving settings to get the right balance for me. VLC works fine for me though.
  • by hyades1 ( 1149581 ) <hyades1@hotmail.com> on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:46PM (#57010476)

    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.

    • 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.

      • Because people will blindly hit the 'OK' button, have problems, and blame the software.
        • 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.

        • 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.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Thursday July 26, 2018 @08:04AM (#57012168)

      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.

      • I agree with everything you said and would only add that for 4GB+ files, VLCs tearing is awful.

        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...
      • by Anonymous Coward

        SMplayer works great on windows, give it a shot. Been using it for years. All the features of mplayer/mpv with a good interface.

    • 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.

  • by piojo ( 995934 ) on Wednesday July 25, 2018 @09:53PM (#57010508)

    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.

    • 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.

  • Users to blacklist Huawei.
  • Chinese users are obsessed with installing dozens if not hundreds apps some of which love to stay in background, wake your phone every 10 seconds or even prevent it from going to deep sleep at all, which is why almost all Chinese OEMs implement various measures to keep battery usage within sane limits and as a result Android from China will prevent many "normal" (properly coded) apps from working correctly. In this case I fully support VLC developers.
  • Just tell people in-app on likely impacted devices "Your phone has power management that keeps VLC from playing in the background. Please ((go here)) and exempt it if you want to use background audio." Depending on how Android kills background processes it's probably also feasible to detect if this is happening and present that alert in that case - or I guess they can just continue blacklisting manufacturers as more and more of them do similar things to extend battery life. "VLC: The best background player

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