Kathrin studied Computer Science and did her PhD in Software & Systems Engineering at the TU Munich. She started her career at a research and predevelopment department for software in cars at BMW AG. During the last decade she worked for Ergon Informatik AG in Switzerland, primarily developing Android apps for heating and climate systems and railways applications.
Kathrin Scheidemann
Senior Software Engineer @ Ergon Informatik AG
Surviving Telephony: How to keep your app awake to ensure user safety in a GSM phone app
Android has become more and more strict in recent years about when your app is allowed to run and when it is forcefully put to sleep or even killed. Building an app that is almost "always on" and at the same time does something useful has become tough. We gained hands-on experience with these restrictions while we worked on a GSM telephony app for optimised group communication of the shunting workers of a major European railway operator.
In this session we present the key lessons learnt when creating a full-blown replacement of the standard Android telephony app for specific corporate use cases of complex voice communication scenarios. We also show how to overcome the fundamental challenges encountered when implementing mechanisms to keep the app always "alive and awake" so that it can ensure the physical safety of the users.
Join the talk and gain insights into the complexity of Android telephony and what you can do to keep your app "alive and awake" if needed.
Tags: safety, always on, telephony, GSM, doze mode, foreground process, wakelock, standby bucket, battery, railways