Item: HUAWEI devices banned by VLC — but here’s how you can still download it
Rating: 0
Author: Vyncent Chan

HUAWEI devices banned by VLC — but here’s how you can still download it

HUAWEI users have been leaving 1-star reviews on VLC’s Play Store download page, and it has resulted in VideoLAN banning recent HUAWEI devices from downloading the app from the Play Store. This is apparently due to HUAWEI’s overzealous background-app-killing policies.

PSA: @HuaweiMobile phones are now blacklisted and cannot get VLC on the Play Store.
Their ridiculous policy of killing all background apps (except their own) breaks VLC audio background playback (of course).
See https://t.co/QzDW7KbV4I and many other reports…@HuaweiFr

— VideoLAN (@videolan) July 25, 2018

HUAWEI’s AI is supposed to detect and kill unnecessary background tasks to preserve battery life, but it is currently overdoing it and killing background apps, even those that the user wants to have running. VLC needs to run in the background to play music in the background, but HUAWEI users who could not use the feature were disgruntled and left poor reviews on the You can actually allow the apps to keep running in the background, but those who left 1-star reviews apparently do not know how to do that.

You can still download the VLC APK from VideoLAN’s website and install it yourself. If you know how to do that, you should be capable of allowing the app to run in the background. The downside of sideloading is that you won’t get automatic updates.

Are manufacturers being too aggressive with their management tools, or are users just expecting everything to work out of the box without any intervention? Given that manufacturers are all touting AI that learns your usage behavior, you can’t really blame them though.

Source: Android Authority

Pokdepinion: I think smartphones should not kill any background apps at all, unless they are known to be malicious in nature.