[fritzo]

Yes, Dear app developers, different users want different things.

The primary uses of my phone are (1) multi-factor authentication, and (2) as a GPS beacon whereby family can locate me if I'm injured in the wilderness. I definitely value battery life over app snazz.

[ryandrake]

Longer battery life is consistently number 1 on any survey of mobile phone users you'll find, ahead of camera. It's far and away what people care about. It's not surprising that phone manufacturers will do anything they can to improve theirs vs. competitions, including killing apps that are sitting there sucking up battery.

Longer battery life was the clear winner with 73% of people picking it as the most enticing reason to buy a new smartphone.[1]

60% of surveyed mobile phone users stated they would switch phones if the battery life improved (China) [2]

61 per cent cited battery as the key consideration, just behind the smartphone camera (India) [3]

76 per cent of iPhone owners and 77 per cent of Android users listed longer battery life as something that will get them excited about buying a new phone (USA) [4]

1: https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/19/iphone-buyers-want-battery-li...

2: https://www.gizchina.com/2023/05/08/do-you-have-mobile-phone...

3: https://www.businesstoday.in/technology/news/story/long-batt...

4: https://www.scmp.com/magazines/style/tech-design/article/218...

[izacus]

Of course, those very same users then also want their chat messages and calls to actually work and work immediately. Their health data and step counters to sync. Their GPS trackers and location sharing to be SPOT ON and never lag behind the real world. Their music to keep playing and their chromecast controls to keep working. Their iCloud and Google Photos to sync if their phone gets stolen or dropped into a toilet.

But sure, it's the battery - it's just that the best way to save the battery (turn off the phone) isn't REALLY what's important ;)

And comments like yours are funny on this very site, because what this site complains is OEMs killing competition and choice by selecting apps that are allowed to be used - e.g. apps like Signal are the ones that suffer the most because they're not blessed by exceptions.

[j16sdiz]

Battery Life is something measurable. It shows well on tech spec and marketing materials.

"Not killing apps", on the other hand, is hard to sell. User may notice some apps become less responsive, load slower, notification are delayed, etc.. but then they would blame the app, not the OS.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoy longer battery life.

[photonthug]

So does GPS beacon then not qualify as an app? I guess here you can hope the vendor has an "official" beacon app that they grant battery-life exceptions for, but then you're screwed if you prefer a third-party beacon. Maps, those can be as safety-critical as a beacon too.. it would be a shame if someone cleared your map-cache because app-devs / mobile OS designers are optimizing for urban technophiles who have easy access to electricity. Or if that flashlight app breaks because it has an offline-mode that's insufficiently tested, and it chokes down when it's trying to load ads from an API it can no longer access! It's depressing to think about but bad UX, poor initial design, or just inevitable enshitification of perfectly fine working systems like this has no doubt actually killed people.