Unexpected internet connectivity behaviour (in my opinion!)

[GraemeT]

Most of us want to conserve battery life on our mobile phones as a general principle (my Lumia 820 battery issues aside). To that end I switch off all services until they are required. Then for example, I want to look at a website. I launch Explorer. It tells me that it can't connect to the Internet. I regard this as unexpected behaviour. Yes, I've switched off data and WIFI services, but I've just launched an application that requires them. To me, expected behaviour would be that the application sees that the service it requires is turned off, but turns it on itself because it needs that service to do what I'm going to ask of it (duh!). Then when I exit the application, it returns the service to the state that it found it in. Namely in my case, off (clever application). Is this too much to ask? Yet it would appear that the whole process is manual. Oh yeah, I forgot I turned connectivity off, so I'll just have to go into settings and turn it on again, then go back to Explorer and launch it again (come on guys!). This seems archaic to me. All this said, and to not pick on WP8, iPads behave in the same way, as far as I can see. So as ever, I'm obviously missing something here. What does everybody else think?

Regards, GraemeT.

 

[11B1P]

I like the idea, but being I'm not a developer, I don't know how easy or hard, it would be to design the system that way. I don't necessarily agree that this behavior is unexpected, it is doing what you told it to do, turn off. Really with the ease of switching between apps and Settings, it is not too labor intensive.

 

[philxor]

99.9% of users do not turn those things off. I would rather they not spend development time on add a feature most wouldn't use.

 

[Flan Tamarind]

I imagine that if it worked as you wish, there would be plenty of malware that would turn on these services to maliciously attack your phone and steal information. Currently, I believe this is done to keep your information safe until they have a secure, verifiable way to allow this access without allowing malicious activity.

I understand why you may want to turn these services off, but frankly it makes little sense to me to do so. While data services do draw battery, you would be hard pressed to run your phone dry before you get home and charge it up. As the previous poster said, it would sort of be a waste of time. The only useful application here would be for NFC to allow you to have presets for home, car, and work to change certain connectivity settings. That is something I would like, but is by no means a deal breaker. Merely a convenience.

 

[ImmortalWarrior]

Imagine you are roaming and turn off your data to prevent incurring charges. Then you open IE, or the email app by accident without thinking and it downloads a mb of content. Do this 5 times, then get a 100 dollar roaming bill.

 

[ttsoldier]

Developers time would be better spent fixing battery life issues as opposed to integrating something like this into the OS.

Just my 2c

 

[Chregu]

In my opinion this is a terrible idea.

If I turn something off, I want it to be off, no matter what any app is doing. The settings should always be a level over the apps.

I like WP because you know what it is doing, you know what apps can do and what not. I don't want any apps to temper with my settings. For example, I turn 'Location' off and turn it on when I need GPS. I don't want any apps to track where I am, I don't want Microsoft to track where I am, I want to save battery. Imagine all the apps (and which app doesn't want to have access to GPS nowadays) would just turn it on anyway. Terrible, terrible idea.

Also, my mother uses my old WP7 device, her contract doesn't include data. So she uses the wireless LAN at home, but never data services. Imagine the costs if data would be activated whenever she opens any app that for some reason accesses the internet. The more I think about it, the less I like this :wink:

 

[BokiV]

I never turn off my connection services, that would be annoying! But the whole point of turning them off is so no app can access them..so if you want every app to turn on the data, just keep it on all the time

 

[Funky Cricket]

I have to disagree with the OP, if "I" turn something off, I want it off for a reason. If I programs to do what they wanted, I wouldn't have manually turned if off.

 

[GraemeT]

Okay. Fair enough. You've all made good points. Maybe I hadn't fully thought this through. Thank you all for your opinions. So, expected (and desired) behaviour it is!