Smartphone manufacturers use Android to customize it to their liking, not only through skins that change the appearance, but also with deeper modifications to the behavior of the system. One of the side effects of this approach has been inconsistent behavior of foreground and background apps and services. Google is now going one step further to address this inconsistency, announcing a closer collaboration with Samsung for its upcoming One UI 6.0 update based on Android 14. App developers and users have long been unhappy with the way some OEMs treat background services. Applications such as instant messaging and others frequently run in the background, which means that users may miss important messages and other notices. It’s a bad experience for everyone, made worse by how different this behavior can be between different versions of Android from each manufacturer. Google wants to make sure that the APIs that dictate how apps work in the background work predictably and consistently across the ecosystem. To this end, Google has partnered with Samsung to ensure that app foreground services will work the same in One UI 6.0 as they do in Android 14. To strengthen the Android platform, our collaboration with Google has resulted in a unified policy that we hope will create a more consistent and reliable user experience for Galaxy users. Starting with One UI 6.0, foreground services for apps targeting Android 14 will work as expected as long as they are developed in accordance with the new Android Foreground Services API policy. This is great news for app developers. As long as app developers build the app with the correct specifications and follow Google’s recommended best practices, they can expect apps (and their corresponding foreground and background services) to work reliably on One UI 6.0. Interestingly, Google’s announcement mentions Samsung as the “first partner.” If we’re allowed to read between the lines, this suggests that more Android manufacturers could join in the future.
