[LarsCor]

Might be a silly question, but whats the point of some background apps like Phone, Word, Alarms and Store. When I view the battery saving options on my Lumia 950 XL, I can prevent some apps from running in the background. In some cases, this makes sense. Facebook or Whatsapp wont connect automatically, so you wont get updates nor will it use your battery. But phone calls are still coming trough, and so are alarms I've set or updates for apps (I think?), and Word is not connection so not sure why Word would run in the background at all.

Anyone who can explain what these and other apps are actually doing and why letting them run/disable in background would be a good/bad thing?

[tomcox76]

Good question

[Tien-Lin Chang]

Keeping IM like Facebook/whatsapp alive will causing battery drain on 950/XL?

Wow that's a sad fact to be aware of.

[anon(2523636)]

Keeping IM like Facebook/whatsapp alive will causing battery drain on 950/XL?

Wow that's a sad fact to be aware of.

Well, anything that runs on any system in the background will USE battery. That is entirely normal. Messaging apps like WhatsApp need to use resources to receive messages. That is not to say they use excessive amounts of battery.

[Diego Ceccacci]

I tought if you stop phone in background, you stop receiving calls

[Bobvfr]

This is just me navel gazing into the future (A couple of years down the line)

This on the face of it seems a very simple question, but the answer has profound bearings on the future of mobile telephony and possibly Microsoft's and many other companies future's.

Skype was/maybe still is,the standard for VOIP use around the world, it still have many millions of active users, but if it doesn't change, it is dead software.

So many Skype users have very luddite approach to Skype, you see "Why can't it stay the same as it was 10 years ago". Sorry folks, it can't stay the same if it wants to be a player in the future.

It has to change from a contact when we allow it, to a contact at all times service. Otherwise it will not allow MS to be the big player in the future.

Even British Telecom in the UK (basically the owner of all the UK infrastructure and all the exchanges) and all of the carriers like Vodafone and EE (Now BT) recognise that the old telephony is dead and that in 10 years time it will all be VOIP/Skype.

So Skype/MS allow a system to stay in place where the only way to contact some luddite is to run between villages, knock on the door and say "I will Skype call you in two days when I have ran back to my home and switched on Skype, make sure you have Skype on ready".

This is going to **** off some nutters and maybe some XP die hard's, but if Skype and MS are to be ahead of the game and they are at the moment, then the future for comm'sis always on and contactable, just like most phones are now.

Skype has pretty much gone through one massive change of P2P being dropped in favour of cloud/account based usage, and now it also has to go through another big change to be ready to either become the standard of how we communicate or wither and die in the attempt, but sitting on the fence isn't an option.

[LarsCor]

Well, drain might be poor choise of words. No complains about the amount of energy apps like these use, but of course they do use SOME, and that could be a reason to turn them off (and also the messages).

But I've disabled apps like Alarms and Phone a while back for a test, and still receive calls and wake up every morning to the happy tunes of my alarm. Soooo.... what did I disable? Why is it even possible?