VLC is blacklisting recent Huawei devices to combat negative app reviews

VLC is blacklisting recent Huawei devices to combat negative app reviews

6 years ago
Anonymous $RBasgWKaIV

https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/25/17614014/vlc-blacklisting-recent-huawei-devices-negative-app-reviews

Some newer Huawei phones are actively being blocked from installing the open-source VLC media player app from Google Play. VLC’s developers announced today that they’re blacklisting some of Huawei’s devices after unhappy users left too many one-star reviews for the app. But the negative reviews stem from a decision on Huawei’s part and has nothing to do with VLC.

The negative reviews are a result of Huawei’s aggressive battery management and tendency to kill background apps, which directly affects VLC’s background audio playback feature. Huawei users on VLC’s forums are well aware of the issue. It’s possible to manually disable these battery optimizations and have the app function properly in the background, but VLC claims that people often don’t know how to do that, so they blame the app instead.