Samsung has made great strides over the past few years in building its One UI skin as one of the best versions of Android on the market. Well, things seem to be going in the wrong direction. Apparently, Samsung has implemented an aggressive background app murder policy in Android 11 which is the best in the worst ways.
Do not kill is a standalone website that ranks Android OEMs based on handling background app management. The site looks at how AOSP and Google’s own Pixels handle background apps, and from there looks at how major OEMs are changing the platform for the worse, leading users to see their wallpapers shut down unexpectedly.
For years, this list has mostly remained the same, with almost Android manufacturers like Sony and Nokia sitting comfortably in low positions (lower is better), while achieving more aggressive changes from Xiaomi, Asus, Oppo and other higher positions. Huawei was at the top of the list for a very long time, with OnePlus a short second and Samsung a lag behind. Well, that’s changed.
Samsung now sits in the first place when it comes to aggressively killing background apps thanks to changes the company is upgrading to Android 11. A new restriction introduced by Samsung prevents apps from waking up in the foreground services. This change, which is on by default, is described as a ‘serious deviation from standard Android process management policies’ and may lead to some background bugs breaking, including some health programs that may lose the ability to collect sensor data.
Fortunately, there is a solution. Users can dive to different settings pages (Settings> Applications> Your app> Battery> Battery optimization> All apps> [App Name] > Do not optimize) and disable the battery optimization.
This comes especially after Google said it would take measures to prevent exactly this kind of behavior from its Android partners. Clearly, Samsung did not receive the memo or completely ignored it.
Since some have been using Samsung’s latest Galaxy S21 devices and a Galaxy Z Fold 2 for the past few months, I can not say that I noticed these issues directly. However, this can be directly related to the fact that all Samsung devices have exuberant amounts of RAM, causing background apps to be left alone. This issue probably makes itself more apparent on Samsung’s cheaper devices.
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