Android Oreo Bug Eats Up Mobile Data Even When On Wi-Fi (betanews.com) 89
Mark Wilson shares a report from BetaNews: An apparent bug with Android Oreo has been discovered which means Google's mobile operating system could be munching its way through your data allowance, even if you're connected to a wireless network. A thread on Reddit highlighted the issue, with many people pointing out that it could prove expensive for anyone not using an unlimited data plan. Google is apparently aware of the problem and is working on a patch, but in the meantime Oreo users are being warned to consider disabling mobile data when they are at home or using a wireless connection elsewhere.
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So? ... How is this Apples fault?
Because fuck apple.
Will anybody actually get that patch? (Score:5, Insightful)
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And with the current situation where the users of a device is prevented from doing the changes they like to their devices including downgrading the OS the interest in Android goes down.
It's a sour situation right now when you aren't in control of the device you have bought. I can understand that there may be some constraints to at least prevent malware but the owner of the device shall be able to be in control of the device and not risk it being bricked.
A major reason for having more control over your devic
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And with the current situation where the users of a device is prevented from doing the changes they like to their devices including downgrading the OS the interest in Android goes down.
It's a sour situation right now when you aren't in control of the device you have bought. I can understand that there may be some constraints to at least prevent malware but the owner of the device shall be able to be in control of the device and not risk it being bricked.
A major reason for having more control over your device is to get rid of bloatware that the manufacturers have a habit of installing. Some bloatware is also a security risk for various reasons.
Only buy a phone that's supported by LineageOS [lineageos.org]. Then you get updated builds every Thursday. My phone, a Oneplus 2, only officially has Marshmallow. Thanks to LineageOS, I'm running Nougat. It's also more responsive, I get better battery life and I only had to install the bare minimum of Google apps needed for Play (mostly use APKUpdater [github.com] and F-Droid [f-droid.org] anyway). Then I just root it with Magisk [xda-developers.com] and still pass SafetyNet (I only care about Pokemon Go).
TL;DR: buy a LineageOS supported phone or an iPhone if you want
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Re:Will anybody actually get that patch? (Score:5, Funny)
It was RTMd about a week ago ... do keep up.
The 2017 definition of RTM - "A larger pool of beta testers."
Do keep up.
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Don't be silly, most of it hasn't even got that far.
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It's not in Beta - it was released on 21st August.
Yes, it was released...to a larger pool of beta testers.
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This is why the standard Google "perpetual beta" joke isn't very damn funny. It's "on paper" officially released. So it's not supposed to be beta-quality.
But the phased rollout of 8.0 means that the "lucky winners" of this bug are the owners of the "Google device" class, like Pixel and Nexus users. The overwhelming majority of near-future Oreo users won't get it until their phone manufacturer and wireless provider have had a chance to hack on it (i.e., add their own bloatware), so maybe they'll have a chanc
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Pixel users mostly. Nexus downloads may be available already, but the OTA updates are scheduled to start next week, and most will wait for them in order to avoid having to backup and restore all their data.
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Seeing as Oreo is basically only available right now on Google devices (Nexus, Pixel), I suspect that carriers who provide it later on will get the patch.
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With the current record of manufacturers and carriers not giving a damn about porting the Android updates to their products
Who are those? The vast majority of vendors based on their current record have no problem at all issuing you patches even for older devices. They do however with-hold OS updates. You want Oreo? Fuck you, here have yet another minor point update to Jellybean instead.
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With the current record of manufacturers and carriers not giving a damn about porting the Android updates to their products, I'm happy that google is developing a patch, but I'm wondering if anybody will actually receive the patch.
Since only Google devices have received Oreo yet, the patch will be out and in the source before other OEMs upgrade or ship devices.
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The default for that setting for normal users is "on" by design, it's there for fast transition to mobile data when the wifi signal goes out of range. Pretty sure that was the default in Android 7 also, at least on the Pixel. And it works great, one of my favourite features. That shouldn't increase data usage - wifi is used when it's there, the only difference is how fast you switch over to cellular data when the wifi signal goes out of range.
Possible workaround missing from the summary,natch (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Possible workaround missing from the summary,n (Score:1)
When you only have 5 options the user can change, it's pretty easy to have them readily accessible.
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I have an app that lets me quickly turn off mobile data. Well actually, it lets me turn it on, as I have a minimal data plan so I leave it off almost all the time, unless I need to quickly send an email when I'm away from home or work.
When I first go tthe phone this was difficult as there was no quick enable/disable of mobile data like my older phone had, requiring going through several levels of settings to get to it. My guess at the time was that the service providers want you to suck up their bandwidth
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Seeing as how the only devices currently running Oreo are Google's own, I'd imagine they'll be getting the patches fairly swiftly.
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Firstly Android 8 is only just out, I just got the OTA on my Pixel yesterday, so very few people have it. So not really an issue as far as fragmentation goes. I'm not sure any non-Google phones have shipped with it yet.
Secondly you haven't been paying attention to the Android 8 changes. The Google stuff, the SoC vendor stuff, and the OEM stuff are now cleanly separated ( diagram [arstechnica.net]), so Google updates can be applied without affecting the OEM stuff; there is no need any more for OEMs to spend resources customisi
unlimited (Score:2)
Unlimited never seems to mean what you think it means.
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To bill slashdot for wasting you time with clickbait...
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How much data? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How much data? (Score:5, Funny)
The article and the Reddit thread both talk about a "huge spike" in data usage without including any hard figures. What are we talking about here? 100 MB per day? A gigabyte?
It's roughly two football fields worth of data, I believe.
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The article and the Reddit thread both talk about a "huge spike" in data usage without including any hard figures. What are we talking about here? 100 MB per day? A gigabyte?
Dunno. I've been running Oreo on and off for about six months now, though, and noticed no data usage while at home. So at least for my usage patterns it's clearly not large. Maybe some apps are worse than others? Or maybe it depends on your home Wifi. I could see that flaky Wifi combined with "mobile data always on" could cause the phone to fall back to using mobile data if the Wifi seems bad. It would do that with mobile data off, too, but it would take longer to make the switch, which might give the Wifi
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I've been experiencing a similar issue in the last week since i applied a security patch with my Pixel using Project Fi (I'm still on Android N), when on wifi at home it will switch to mobile data and stay that way, I've been turning off mobile data at home and it's fixed it for me. Seems to cost me about 20-100mb/day of data otherwise. I got the option to upgrade to O, but... yeah fuck that, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop. Going to wait another two weeks probably and let them sort this shit out,
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And it didn't occur to you that something was wrong when streaming was still working after you left your house? Or did you think your wi-fi router had a 500 miles range?
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And it didn't occur to you that something was wrong when streaming was still working after you left your house? Or did you think your wi-fi router had a 500 miles range?
I don't use spotify but I believe the subscription service for it allows you to save music locally to listen without streaming. It's quite possible that the GP thought it was using local media instead of streaming.
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It seems unlikely. A 500 mile trip has got to take at least 10 hours. Unless the GP was listening to the same few tracks thinking they had cached - also unlikely.
I prefer the obvious (in the true spirit of Occam's razor) - the GP has a circular road around his home and he drove 500 miles on that road thinking that the wifi would continue to function.
The newly installed router fell over and died as soon as he got into his car. From this I deduce that the router was made by Belkin. That's why they cal
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You get a different sound when it's saved locally. Not as warm.
Android Oreo bug eats up mobile data on Wi-Fi (Score:4, Funny)
I've heard that dipping your smartphone in milk fixes the problem.
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Only for the models without removable batteries. To fix this problem you need to hard reset it with the following procedure:
1. Remove back cover from phone.
2. Remove battery with teeth.
3. Eat battery.
4. Reassemble phone.
5. Dip reassembled phone in milk.
5 - evil edition : Put phone back in packet and give to sister.
So, like iOS' WiFi Assist then (Score:2)
Right?
First locking out 'rollback of updates', now this. (Score:2)
I'm just a cynical bastard as my comment history will say. But damn it... I'd just as soon not be confirmed in my own biases every damn time Google rolls out a really shitty feature.
But at the end of the day Google; why is it that you are so damn obsessed with central control of the environment when you can't even get half of your new features to work right to begin with? You're supposed to be in the business of providing consumer devices to people that they want to buy the best things you can make, not
Carriers should assume responsibility (Score:2)
Carriers in the US sell you the phones. Some require that you use their device exclusively. If a carrier sells me a phone, and that phone has a bug that causes my data usage to go beyond what I am using, it's the carrier's problem, not mine. I they attempt to bill me for it knowing that the device they sold me is causing this phantom data usage, they are the ones committing fraud. I see a class action lawsuit coming against carriers who choose to bill for data usage caused purely by a defect in a product th