[TheScionicMan]

Nope. Only if you have a Youtube Music Key. And only then, it only plays "ad free" content in the background.

It's odd that some posters frame it as a feature nobody would ever use and then Google offers it as an upgrade incentive.

Seems contradictory.

[mornhavon]

I traded my Z30 for an LG G2 and it turns out, apps running in the background was quite useful on BB10. The two main ones are obviously Youtube and also the flashlight.

For background YouTube on Android, try PVSTAR+ by ASBIT (it's free). It plays YouTube videos and continues to play the audio while it's minimized or while your screen is off. While playing, it adds shortcuts in your notification pane that allow you to pause, resume, or go to the previous/next track in a playlist that you create.

For your flashlight woes on Android, try "Pure Flashlight Widget" by xbmi, create a widget on your homescreen and you're golden. There are countless free flashlight apps that function in the background or while the screen is off, this is just one that I'm aware of. There are a few models (mainly some HTC phones I think) that turn off the flashlight when the phone goes into sleep mode (shortly after the screen is turned off), but other than that I think just about any Android phone can do it.

[mornhavon]

It's odd that some posters frame it as a feature nobody would ever use and then Google offers it as an upgrade incentive.
Seems contradictory.

Yeah, some people either don't see a use-case for it or just go out of their way to defend their platform of choice.

That being said though, this really isn't a BB10 vs. Android discussion. Android is more than capable of background audio (as well as far more intensive multi-tasking) and has many apps specifically for that task, including third-party YouTube apps that play in the background (like PVSTAR+). The official YouTube app has just been designed to stop playing when it's not active on the screen, whether that's to protect ad revenue or is just what they think most users expect from it (without "YouTube Music Key") can only be answered by Google, but it's definitely not a limitation of Android.

[DenverRalphy]

It's odd that some posters frame it as a feature nobody would ever use and then Google offers it as an upgrade incentive.

Seems contradictory.

I don't know that anybody framed it as a feature. :shrug:

If I wasn't already a Google Music subscriber there's no way I'd pay for the YouTube Music Key. But I could see the business decision behind it. Google wants people to subscribe to Google Play Music to stream unlimited music. It wouldn't work very well for them if another of their very own services provided a workaround to stream most of that music for free.


Penned via Tapatalk

[deadcowboy]

Watching Youtube in the background?

Yeah, bouncing between youtube videos, youtube songs, documentaries...but especially tutorials. Bouncing between a tutorial or a review and a website and a PDF and an Email. It's something that affects me every day. And the automatic video pause in other platforms it the most shocking difference to me. Everything else is kind of similar, but that always shocks me.

Posted via CB10

[deadcowboy]

You can do this on an iPad.

No you can't. That would require you to open up the bottom drawer and resume the youtube video, close the drawer, and then get on with what you were doing when you originally closed the youtube app. I'm bouncing between apps with a video going.

Posted via CB10

[blueberrymerry]

Well, some Samsung Android devices have a multiwindow capability where you can run two app windows side-by-side with both running. Android's multitasking model is similar to iOS and Windows Phone where an app going into the background is paused, with only background services active. It's a good way to stop battery drain and excessive data usage without requiring the user to manually close an app. When you bring that app to the foreground, it resumes its previous state and either reloads cached data (if there's enough RAM) or pulls it from the network. I previously preferred Symbian and Meego's multitasking model where all apps are active but now, with well coded apps that resume state properly, I see the Android model as more efficient.

As for the Youtube app stopping playback when it goes to the background, that also happens with most Android video players. It's a conscious design decision to stop the battery running flat from a video file or stream playing in the background, whereas a music file takes a lot less power to decode and play back.

[Soulstream]

I think it's clear and others have said that it's not that Android (as an OS) can't do it, it's just that Google decided not to implement it in their official youtube app.

[MmmHmm]

No you can't. That would require you to open up the bottom drawer and resume the youtube video, close the drawer, and then get on with what you were doing when you originally closed the youtube app. I'm bouncing between apps with a video going.

Posted via CB10

The only difference between the implementations is that iOS assumes you didn't want to watch or listen to the video anymore when you left the browser. To me, thats a fair assumption. Once you've left the browser, you can override that assumption at any time by swiping up and tapping play. You can pull up the drawer from anywhere, including while in another app, and bounce between apps all you want with the audio playing. You might not prefer this assumption, but it's not exactly a shocking or obviously poor design choice.

[slagman5]

Well, some Samsung Android devices have a multiwindow capability where you can run two app windows side-by-side with both running. Android's multitasking model is similar to iOS and Windows Phone where an app going into the background is paused, with only background services active. It's a good way to stop battery drain and excessive data usage without requiring the user to manually close an app. When you bring that app to the foreground, it resumes its previous state and either reloads cached data (if there's enough RAM) or pulls it from the network. I previously preferred Symbian and Meego's multitasking model where all apps are active but now, with well coded apps that resume state properly, I see the Android model as more efficient.

As for the Youtube app stopping playback when it goes to the background, that also happens with most Android video players. It's a conscious design decision to stop the battery running flat from a video file or stream playing in the background, whereas a music file takes a lot less power to decode and play back.

I'm glad my Q10's battery lasts an entire day without the need of all of these battery saving things... Whenever an Android or iPhone user asks me if I have a charger, I confess that instead of buying a charger I accidentally bought a phone with decent battery life instead, lol. :-D

?Posted without the aid of AutoCorrect with my physical keyboard via CB10

[shaleem]

I'm glad my Q10's battery lasts an entire day without the need of all of these battery saving things... Whenever an Android or iPhone user asks me if I have a charger, I confess that instead of buying a charger I accidentally bought a phone with decent battery life instead, lol. :-D

?Posted without the aid of AutoCorrect with my physical keyboard via CB10

That's a great feature. Too bad I can't say that about my Z10

[slagman5]

That's a great feature. Too bad I can't say that about my Z10

Yah, my mom has a Z10, I know what you mean, my condolences. :-/

?Posted without the aid of AutoCorrect with my physical keyboard via CB10

[bicyclexpress]

What the Playbook OS could do would double BB10. A shame really, I absolutely loved this about the PBOS.

I hear you. I am sometimes curious to wonder what the discussions were like in BlackBerry when they were drawing up bb10. They tossed a lot of the good things in the playbook, and did not include many of the loved features of bbos (notifications, keyboard shortcuts). I would love to know the though-process. I feel like there were a lot of missed opportunities.

Posted via CB10

[mnc76]

Really? It never did that when I was using BB10. Do you remember when did those play and pause buttons start controlling it? The last time I used BB10, which I admit that I am behind on updates, you minimized the browser and whatever was on screen became frozen and audio continued to play. I had no control over it except for volume, and it seemed very unintentional. Glad to see that they are making improvements like that though.

Does the video still freeze on the screen or does it now work like the PlayBook and Sailfish OS where the video can both be watched and listened to at the same time while minimized?

For those of you who don't use Sailfish OS, this is what I'm talking about:

It could always do it. To pause audio you could always just had to press the middle button (between the up and down volume buttons).

It's been like this since version 10.0.

---
"Does the video still freeze on the screen"

Video has always paused in the active frame, but is still rendered in an off-screen buffer. This way it uses far less battery (since rendering a video off-screen takes a fraction of the power that updating pixels on the screen takes -- your display is almost always the biggest (by a large margin) killer of battery life).

It also ensures that when you go back to the video you will be immediately at the right spot (it doesn't have to buffer to get 'caught up').


It's a good balance between battery usage and providing an intuitive, friendly user experience.


Posted from my awesome White Z30

[TgeekB]

I'm glad my Q10's battery lasts an entire day without the need of all of these battery saving things... Whenever an Android or iPhone user asks me if I have a charger, I confess that instead of buying a charger I accidentally bought a phone with decent battery life instead, lol. :-D

?Posted without the aid of AutoCorrect with my physical keyboard via CB10

Mostly because of the tiny screen. My old eyes couldn't take it any more and I had to sell my Q10.

[slagman5]

Mostly because of the tiny screen. My old eyes couldn't take it any more and I had to sell my Q10.

Well, to me, watching media on ANY phone is too small for me, so I don't care about that. To use for everything else my vision is good enough to see everything so the screen isn't "tiny" for me. So it works for me. I'll take the battery life over having some enormous phone for no good reason since I still don't like watching videos on them...

?Posted without the aid of AutoCorrect with my physical keyboard via CB10

[Witmen]

It's a good balance between battery usage and providing an intuitive, friendly user experience.

That's one way to look at it I guess, but it could also just be the result of them not adding the extra code to pause the video automatically.

Look at how the PlayBook and Sailfish OS handle it. Doesn't it look far more polished on those devices than on BB10? The way BB10 does it now is actually a downgrade from the way the first version of BB10 did it. Don't forget, the first BB10 versions still had the WebOS UI from the PlayBook instead of the MeeGo UI. Back then, on the BlackBerry Colt, you could watch and hear minimized YouTube videos.

Folks can say it is intentional all they'd like, but do you really think BlackBerry intended for their users to enjoy minimized YouTube videos one frozen video frame at a time while the audio track continues to play?

Doesn't it seem more likely that they simply didn't add the code to cause the video to pause?

[mnc76]

That's one way to look at it I guess, but it could also just be the result of them not adding the extra code to pause the video automatically.

Look at how the PlayBook and Sailfish OS handle it. Doesn't it look far more polished on those devices than on BB10? The way BB10 does it now is actually a downgrade from the way the first version of BB10 did it. Don't forget, the first BB10 versions still had the WebOS UI from the PlayBook instead of the MeeGo UI. Back then, on the BlackBerry Colt, you could watch and hear minimized YouTube videos.

Folks can say it is intentional all they'd like, but do you really think BlackBerry intended for their users to enjoy minimized YouTube videos one frozen video frame at a time while the audio track continues to play?

Doesn't it seem more likely that they simply didn't add the code to cause the video to pause?

I expect that all Cascades apps can register functions to listen to and handle app life cycle events (such "app moved to background"). In such an event handler, the app could pause any playing video.

If it were some big engineering feat to pause video playing in the web browser, then you might have a point. But given that it is likely trivial to do this, I would guess that this was left out on purpose.



Here is the BB10 app life cycle. And according to BlackBerry's dev documentation :

"When an app makes its transition from one stage of the life cycle to another, the BlackBerry 10 OS notifies the app using events."

As you can see, a BB10 app will be notified of a transition from "foreground" to "invisible" or "foreground" to "thumbnail". The app should be able to easily pause any playing video when notified that one of these transitions has occurred.

http://developer.blackberry.com/nati...lifecycle.html

I'm not a BB10 developer, however, this is a pretty universal architecture for modern event driven applications (across all mobile and PC operating systems).

Posted from my awesome White Z30

[Originalloverman]

Good find ☺ I think they did mention this feature of bb 10 when it 1st launched in the z10

Posted via the CrackBerry App for Android

[3Dee]

Thanks OP!

Posted via CB10

[donnation]

If there was a native YouTube app for BB10 this "revelation" wouldn't be occurring using their app. On a side note using the web version on both Android and iOS plays in the background.

[TgeekB]

Well, to me, watching media on ANY phone is too small for me, so I don't care about that. To use for everything else my vision is good enough to see everything so the screen isn't "tiny" for me. So it works for me. I'll take the battery life over having some enormous phone for no good reason since I still don't like watching videos on them...

?Posted without the aid of AutoCorrect with my physical keyboard via CB10

I agree regarding media but even reading text became difficult. I find a 5" screen just about perfect.

[slagman5]

I agree regarding media but even reading text became difficult. I find a 5" screen just about perfect.

I got what you were saying. I'm fortunate to have good vision. I value the shortcuts and accuracy of the physical keyboard so I don't mind sacrificing screen size for it.

?Posted without the aid of AutoCorrect with my physical keyboard via CB10

[aha]

Well, some Samsung Android devices have a multiwindow capability where you can run two app windows side-by-side with both running. Android's multitasking model is similar to iOS and Windows Phone where an app going into the background is paused, with only background services active. It's a good way to stop battery drain and excessive data usage without requiring the user to manually close an app. When you bring that app to the foreground, it resumes its previous state and either reloads cached data (if there's enough RAM) or pulls it from the network. I previously preferred Symbian and Meego's multitasking model where all apps are active but now, with well coded apps that resume state properly, I see the Android model as more efficient.

As for the Youtube app stopping playback when it goes to the background, that also happens with most Android video players. It's a conscious design decision to stop the battery running flat from a video file or stream playing in the background, whereas a music file takes a lot less power to decode and play back.

So Android phones have the best battery efficiency comparing to other platforms.

Posted via CB10 with PassportSQW100-1/10.3.1.1151

[thracian]

So shouldn't that person with the Android phone know that? If they don't know how to customize it that kind of defeats the idea of the vast amount of choices on android being able to solve any problem. An unknown solution may as well not exist in that case.

Z10STL100-4/10.3.1.1151

You could apply this logic both ways: Shouldn't a blackberry buyer have known beforehand that the device they are buying has a severely hobbled app store and barely treading water as the (distant) 4th place OS?