android: service behaved differnat when not connected to pc

Question

I believe it's because of some power saving option or whatever but I cant debug it since it only fails when it's on battery

I have a service that checks on a webpage every 60 seconds I use an asyncTask in the service to do this and I make it Thread.thisThread.sleep(60000); before checking

am I doing something wrong? could the sleep function cause the server to be stopped by android?

Answer 1

I have a service that checks on a webpage every 60 seconds I use an asyncTask in the service to do this and I make it Thread.thisThread.sleep(60000); before checking

Please don't do that.

First, make the period configurable, including a "don't do this, ever" option. Users really do not like it when developers write apps whose primary purpose appears to be to use up a ton of battery life. Keeping the device awake and polling a Web server every minute is going to use up a ton of battery life. It is behavior like this that is causing users to run to every task killer they can find.

Second, particularly for periods greater than a minute or so, please use AlarmManager and a [WakefulIntentService][1]. Schedule the AlarmManager to invoke your application at the user-chosen period (ideally via setInexactRepeating()). Have the WakefulIntentService poll your Web page. If you follow the documented WakefulIntentService recipe, the device will stay awake long enough for you to get your data, then will fall back asleep. Your service will not remain in memory all of the time. You get your functionality, and the user gets better device performance.