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Huawei's aggressive battery management on some of its newer phones can cause background apps to be shut down unexpectedly. This has led to one-star reviews for affected apps, such as VLC on Google Play. In response, VideoLAN has blacklisted these phones:
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 VLC team is specifically blacklisting the Huawei P8, P10, and P20, but users of those devices can still manually download the APK from VLC's website if they're interested in using the player; they're just being blocked from getting it via Google Play. Huawei Honor phones aren't affected. In a tweet translated from French, VideoLAN said, "Blocking normal Android functions is totally abnormal. In that case, why not kill all the apps, and keep the phone off, that would save even more battery!"
VideoLAN said that Huawei refused to whitelist VLC (to prevent the battery-saving feature from killing the application) while whitelisting "competitors". Later, the project got "an answer from Huawei", but the solution could take weeks to arrive.
See also: VideoLAN was right to ban Huawei phones from downloading VLC, but it's users that lose (archive)
(Score: 3, Informative) by DannyB on Tuesday July 31 2018, @05:19PM (3 children)
What's worse than a phone with a camera and mic that can be "remote managed"?
A TV in your home with a camera and mic that is remote managed.
Most people at least know that their phone is a privacy invasion tool. But the TV seems perfectly safe. What could go wrong?
No political leadership would ever want to obtain a list of what TV and News is viewed by the subjects in their regime.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday July 31 2018, @06:28PM
I read about that in The Columbian - the Vancouver Washington rag - in I think 2014:
The shows you watch are reported back to the cable company so they can send your TV personalized ads.
I Am Absolutely Serious.
There is no doubt in my mind that such personalized ads affected the outcome of the 2016 elections, yet I remain puzzled that in this whole time I've only heard about this from that one Columbian article.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by krishnoid on Tuesday July 31 2018, @07:51PM (1 child)
I'd say camera/mic remote management on a phone is much worse, as you can cover up the TV camera/mic permanently without affecting its TV functionality.
Plus, political leadership nowadays can probably get that info directly from a broadcaster that uploads data from its set-top boxes. Monitoring the TV itself is so 1984.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday August 01 2018, @03:02AM
That's another reason I watch, listen to, and read mostly pirated stuff.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.