OEM Power Management

Taming Aggressive Battery Savers

Even if you configure everything perfectly and request a Foreground Service with POST_NOTIFICATIONS, certain Android manufacturers (OEMs) have built proprietary, highly aggressive “Battery Saver” engines into their custom Android forks (like MIUI, EMUI, ColorOS).

These aggressive task killers will terminate your app after a few minutes of screen-off time, regardless of standard Android API rules. Tracelet’s Settings Health API provides a comprehensive suite to detect these devices and automatically route the user to the correct hidden settings menu to whitelist your app.

Supported Manufacturers & Behaviors

Tracelet maintains an internal registry of over 100+ OEM-specific intent structures. When you call Tracelet.showPowerManager(), the engine automatically detects the device brand and fires the correct deep-link.

Here are the primary OEMs we support and what showPowerManager() opens:

📱 Xiaomi / POCO / Redmi (MIUI / HyperOS)

• The Problem: MIUI has a notoriously strict “Autostart” manager and a “Battery Saver” that kills background services after 5 minutes of sleep.
• What Tracelet Opens:
  1. The hidden Autostart menu (user must toggle your app ON).
  2. The specific App Battery Saver menu (user must select “No Restrictions”).

📱 Huawei / Honor (EMUI)

• The Problem: EMUI’s “App Launch” manager kills apps unless they are explicitly set to be managed manually.
• What Tracelet Opens: The App Launch settings screen. The user must uncheck your app and ensure “Auto-launch”, “Secondary launch”, and “Run in background” are all enabled.

📱 Samsung (OneUI)

• The Problem: Samsung aggressively adds apps to its “Deep Sleeping Apps” list if they haven’t been opened in a few days, permanently severing all background execution.
• What Tracelet Opens: The Unmonitored / Never Sleeping Apps menu, allowing the user to add your app to the permanent whitelist.

📱 OnePlus / Oppo (OxygenOS / ColorOS)

• The Problem: Aggressive “App Battery Management” that auto-optimizes background tasks.
• What Tracelet Opens: The App Auto-Launch and Battery Optimization screens.

📱 Vivo (Funtouch OS)

• The Problem: Restricts apps from consuming high power in the background.
• What Tracelet Opens: The High Background Power Consumption whitelist menu.

🌐 Other Devices & DontKillMyApp

For devices not explicitly covered by Tracelet’s deep-link engine, or if you want to understand the exact technical constraints imposed by specific manufacturers, we highly recommend checking out DontKillMyApp.com . It is an incredible community-driven resource that ranks smartphones by their background task aggressiveness and provides manual configuration steps for almost every Android device.

Implementing the Mitigation Flow

You should run this check during your app’s onboarding flow or on the main dashboard:

import 'package:tracelet/tracelet.dart' as tl;
 
// 1. Check the device health
// Returns a Map<String, dynamic> containing the boolean flags
final health = await tl.Tracelet.getSettingsHealth();
 
// 2. Check if the device is a known aggressive OEM
if (health['isAggressiveOem'] == true) {
  
  // 3. Check if the user has already whitelisted your app
  if (health['isIgnoringBatteryOptimizations'] == false) {
    
    // 4. Show a custom Flutter dialog explaining WHY they need to do this
    showDialog(
      context: context,
      builder: (context) => AlertDialog(
        title: Text("Background Tracking Required"),
        content: Text("To ensure your route is recorded, please select 'No Restrictions' on the next screen."),
        actions: [
          TextButton(
            onPressed: () async {
              Navigator.pop(context);
              // 5. Open the specific manufacturer's hidden power menu
              // Returns true if the intent successfully launched the screen, false otherwise.
              final success = await tl.Tracelet.showPowerManager();
              
              if (!success) {
                // Fallback: Open standard Android battery settings
                await tl.Tracelet.openBatterySettings();
              }
            },
            child: Text("Configure"),
          )
        ]
      )
    );
  }
}

Real-time Driver / Fleet Tracking Reliability

The most common question from teams building taxi, delivery, and fleet apps is: “Can Tracelet keep tracking all day on Xiaomi, Poco, Infinix, Tecno, and other aggressive OEMs?” Here’s the honest, practical answer.

What Tracelet handles automatically

These mitigations are applied for you — no configuration required:

• Foreground service with FOREGROUND_SERVICE_TYPE_LOCATION — the highest background priority Android grants.
• START_STICKY — the OS recreates the service after memory-pressure kills.
• OEM-safe wakelocks — on Huawei, a wakelock tag whitelisted by PowerGenie so the process isn’t killed for holding an “unknown” wakelock.
• Boot-receiver wakelock — a short wakelock during BOOT_COMPLETED so the process survives until the foreground service is established after reboot.
• Consumer ProGuard/R8 rules — prevents release builds from stripping services, receivers, and Room entities.

The unavoidable manual step

Gate the start of a driver’s shift on the exemption:

final ignoring = await tl.Tracelet.isIgnoringBatteryOptimizations();
final health = await tl.Tracelet.getSettingsHealth();
 
if (health['isAggressiveOem'] == true && !ignoring) {
  // Walk the user through showPowerManager() + battery-optimization exemption
  // BEFORE letting them go "on shift".
}

Detecting when the OEM has throttled or killed tracking

• Tracelet.getHealth() — one call returns tracking state, provider state, permission/authorization, power-save mode, battery-optimization exemption, and pending unsynced count, with auto-detected warnings. Perfect for a “Device Health” dashboard.
• onProviderChange events — fire when location services / GPS state changes.
• Backend staleness watchdog — every fix is timestamped and persisted, so compare each device’s last fix time against its expected cadence on your server and flag a device whose stream went silent (the classic signature of an OEM kill) within minutes.

Recommended setup checklist for all-day tracking

1. Request Always / background location permission with a clear rationale flow.
2. Run a foreground service with an ongoing notification — non-negotiable for continuous tracking.
3. Set stopOnTerminate: false and startOnBoot: true so tracking survives app close and reboot.
4. During onboarding, call getSettingsHealth(); if isAggressiveOem is true, walk the user through showPowerManager() and the battery-optimization exemption. Gate shift-start on isIgnoringBatteryOptimizations().
5. Use HTTP Sync (batched uploads) so brief network gaps never lose data.
6. Add a backend staleness watchdog so operations sees a device go dark quickly.
7. Ship tracelet_doctor (or getHealth()) in a hidden support screen so field issues are diagnosable on real devices.