Re: [RFD] Automatic suspend

mark gross
2009-02-18T00:55:52Z

On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 07:28:11AM -0800, Brian Swetland wrote:
> [Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>]
> > On Tue, 17 Feb 2009 06:20:01 -0800
> > Brian Swetland <swetland@google.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Of course that still doesn't address userspace. Aggressively going to
> > > suspend lets us compensate for userspace programs that do somewhat
> > > silly things (I agree that it would be best if they didn't but they
> > > do and getting *everyone* to write their userspace code to avoid
> > > spinning or avoid waking up on short-duration timers to poll is a
> > > losing battle).
> >
> > actually with powertop... on the open source side things are actually
> > won. It took all of 6 months...
> > I don't see that as a valid excuse. In fact, if this kind of solution
> > makes real userspace scheduled timers to be missed then I consider it a
> > serious functionality misfeature.
>
> While you can't expect the kernel to solve all the problems of
> userspace, here's the broad situation one could end up in
> (note this specific sequence is generic and not based on any one
> specific product experience):
>
> - carrier deploys a device
> - carrier agrees to allow installation of arbitrary third party apps
> without some horrible certification program requiring app authors
> to jump through hoops, wait ages for approval, etc
> - users rejoice and install all kinds of apps
> - some apps are poorly written and impact battery life
> - users complain to carrier about battery life

Carrier pushes ISV for fix app, and updates that don't suck are
deployed.

Where is the problem?

--mgross

>
> You will end up with some crappy apps that do really dumb things.
> However, even if they're badly written users may still install and use
> these apps because hey, they do something the user likes.
>
> >From the Android standpoint, we're trying to balance protecting the
> system from poorly designed apps and somehow letting the user know "hey
> app X is chewing up a lot of power" (work in progress on this).
>
> While I'd love for every app developer to actively tune their apps for a
> good mobile experience, I am skeptical that this is going to happen.
>
> Brian