Live Tile Issues

[Relatively Rare]

Has anyone had problems with live tiles? My live tiles appear to stop working after 4-7 days before I have to soft reset my Lumia 800 to get them working again.

I'd be interested to know if anyone has had a similar problem.

 

[Seketh]

They work here, I rarely turn off my phone.

Check if you background tasks are off, that's probably it.

 

[Relatively Rare]

Background tasks are definitely on, both in settings and the apps themselves. It happens to all live tiles. Data connection is fine.

Thanks for your reply, however.

 

[Jrexxx]

Battery saver usually turns live tiles off, try turning it off.

 

[Relatively Rare]

Battery saver is set to turn on when battery becomes low, and I rarely ever get to that point. I wouldn't think it would make a difference if I unchecked that box or not, would it?

 

[CHIP72]

My tiles don't refresh problems after I start recharging the phone after it has dropped below 20% battery. (They won't refresh when the battery saver is on, but that is a standard feature.)

I'm not sure what is causing the tile refresh problem. I sometimes have problems with the weather in the HTC Hub tile, but the other tiles (including AccuWeather) update without issues.

 

[jimski]

Sounds odd. Tales that use background tasks will stop updating if not opened for 14 days, bit that does not appear to be your problem. No problems for me with Live Tiles updating since Mango was released. Would you care to share a list of the tiles not updating.

Sent from my Lumia 900 using Board Express

 

[Relatively Rare]

AU Weather Pro and WPCentral are the apps that I notice don't update. I don't have any other live tiles other than those on my start screen.

I contacted the developer of AU Weather Pro and he found no issues on his end.

 

[weepatc]

WPCentral app is prone to switching off updates for some reason. I have to occasionally reset settings in order for the tile to update but on the whole it works fine for me.

Sent from my HTC Titan using Board Express

 

[abners]

They work here, I rarely turn off my phone.

 

[eric12341]

No problems here and I have a ton of live tiles, only ones that stop are the background agent ones if I hadn't visited the app in awhile.

 

[Curtieson]

AU Weather Pro and WPCentral are the apps that I notice don't update. I don't have any other live tiles other than those on my start screen.

I contacted the developer of AU Weather Pro and he found no issues on his end.

The weather apps ALL used to suck before the mango update. Is your phone and all your apps up to date?

You removed the PEOPLE Hub, Phone, Text, Email, Games, and Pictures from your start screen? Those all have Live tiles.

EDIT: about 2 weeks I had to restart my phone because it was acting like it was detecting phantom screen tapping. Up until that point I hadn't turned off the phone in probably 6 months.

 

[Relatively Rare]

Sorry, you're right. Mesaging, phone and email would always update when I receive a missed call/message/email, but the pictures hub would stay stagnant at one picture. I don't have the games tile on my start sreen.

I never took notice of the people hub because I don't have anyones picture flipping but if it appears to happen again I will take note.

My phone is up to date with the latest available OS version (8107) and firmware (12070) from Nokia. All apps are up to date, including AU Weather Pro's mango version.

 

[femanuele]

Problem doesn't seem to be related to any particular phone (I have a Lumia 800 but I've read about a HTC Trophy having the same issue) nor any app.
There is no apparent cause (background tasks are on, they aren't too many, battery saving works only when battery is below 10%), nor is there a solution (rebooting, reinstalling the apps, etc.). I may suppose a hard reset could do the trick, but I'm not willing to go that far (I'd rather wait for the next update and hope for the best).
It doesn't look like the OS update has anything to do with this either (although you never know...), 'cause we've had this update for quite a long time before this started happening (I'm experiencing right now).
If you have homebrew apps installed don't worry, my phone is clean and nothing changes.
Every third-party app is affected; if you have this problem and an app is not affected it's just because it updates its tile via push notification.

Weirdest thing is that one of my apps (I'm a developer) was having this issue too, so I tried to execute my background task while debugging the app...and it worked. The way you test this process (for any non-developer reading) is exactly the same way it works for anyone else, but you have the "privilege" to schedule your background task the way you prefer (basically they give you the possibility to make it run every, let's say, 10 seconds, so you don't have to wait 30 minutes to test your code). So, if I say that the task has to run every 10 seconds, it works; if I don't use this privilege and just wait for it to run when the OS says (that is, every thirty minutes), it just never runs (my app is literally never called).
This to say two things:
1) don't bother talk to developers, they can't do anything about it (the fact that every app has this problem is proof enough)
2) it may very well be true what someone else wrote in this forum, that is the standard scheduling may be broken but when you try alternatives (like an app wrote by a manufacturer, which has some privileged access to other APIs) these may work.

My conclusion is: this is an OS problem (evidently triggered by something very uncommon, considering so few people talking about it) and it specifically involves background tasks and nothing else.

F.

 

[femanuele]

I've got news: I was lucky and found a solution for this problem, but this is still an OS bug so we can only hope it applies to everybody.
I had 16 apps in my Background Tasks list, only 4 of them were enabled; I've uninstalled one of the other 12 I wasn't using ('cause not only I didn't need the background task functionality for this app, I actually didn't need the app)...and the 4 enabled Background Tasks are now working again.
This has nothing to do with Background Tasks limitations for many reasons:
1) 16 tasks are not that many (I install very few apps, most people will have 30-40 apps in this list)
2) official limitation applies to Background Tasks that you are actually using, not the complete list of installed apps that offer this feature (in fact I had disabled 12 of 16 'cause I wanted the apps but didn't need their live tile); this is confirmed by two facts:
a) if this wasn't true you could not freely install any app because if they offered Background Tasks they would count against your quota (even if you disable the Background Task), and most downloaded apps offer live-tile functionality
b) Microsoft has repeatedly advised users to disable some background tasks when they've reached their quota to make it possible for other apps to use this functionality, Microsoft has never suggested to uninstall apps (which would be crazy)
3) if this were a quota problem you would be notified somehow (most apps tend to show a MessageBox)
4) if this were a quota problem only some live tiles wouldn't work (ideally you'd start noticing one single app not working the first time you add one too many), this wouldn't be a problem where everything stops (and, now that I've removed one single app, everything runs again)

Anyways, hope this works for everybody. In the meantime I've contacted Microsoft to see if they find the cause (they didn't seem to be aware of this at all).

F.

 

[thed]

Weirdest thing is that one of my apps (I'm a developer) was having this issue too, so I tried to execute my background task while debugging the app...and it worked. The way you test this process (for any non-developer reading) is exactly the same way it works for anyone else, but you have the "privilege" to schedule your background task the way you prefer (basically they give you the possibility to make it run every, let's say, 10 seconds, so you don't have to wait 30 minutes to test your code). So, if I say that the task has to run every 10 seconds, it works; if I don't use this privilege and just wait for it to run when the OS says (that is, every thirty minutes), it just never runs (my app is literally never called).
This to say two things:
1) don't bother talk to developers, they can't do anything about it (the fact that every app has this problem is proof enough)
2) it may very well be true what someone else wrote in this forum, that is the standard scheduling may be broken but when you try alternatives (like an app wrote by a manufacturer, which has some privileged access to other APIs) these may work.

My conclusion is: this is an OS problem (evidently triggered by something very uncommon, considering so few people talking about it) and it specifically involves background tasks and nothing else.

F.

Interesting stuff here, and your findings are in line with what I posted in my thread.
http://forums.windowscentral.com/os-discussion/192194.htm

I've got news: I was lucky and found a solution for this problem, but this is still an OS bug so we can only hope it applies to everybody.
I had 16 apps in my Background Tasks list, only 4 of them were enabled; I've uninstalled one of the other 12 I wasn't using ('cause not only I didn't need the background task functionality for this app, I actually didn't need the app)...and the 4 enabled Background Tasks are now working again.

I now have 22 apps in the Background Tasks list, 4 enabled. I tried uninstalling 1 or 2 of the apps that were not enabled but it hasn't made a difference. I think I'll try doing a full purge of that list. I'll report back later.

 

[thed]

Ok, some new findings:
I uninstalled every app in the background tasks list that I had disabled and rebooted my phone. Went back to check the list and...they were all still in the list. Uh oh, not a good sign. But a half hour later, it looks like my bg tasks are working again!

I'm not sure how often that background tasks list updates itself, but it's slightly troubling to me that the ones I uninstalled are still on the list. I guess the next step is to reinstall some of those apps and see what happens.

This definitely appears to be an OS problem, and it reminds me of the pre-Mango registry endpoints issue that affected push notifications. I'll keep posting updates if I discover anything new.

 

[SouthpawJosh]

Just chiming in that I noticed this began happening to me within the last 48 hours. I don't have too many live tile apps, but any weather app I've tried doesn't update, and I'm not getting notifications on the "Me" live tile. I uninstalled one disabled background status app, and that doesn't seem to have helped, although it hasn't been that long since I uninstalled. Hopefully in a half hour or so that weather app will update.

 

[SouthpawJosh]

Just chiming in that I noticed this began happening to me within the last 48 hours. I don't have too many live tile apps, but any weather app I've tried doesn't update, and I'm not getting notifications on the "Me" live tile. I uninstalled one disabled background status app, and that doesn't seem to have helped, although it hasn't been that long since I uninstalled. Hopefully in a half hour or so that weather app will update.

Now my Me tile has a notification in there, but Weather Flow still hasn't updated on the live tile.

 

[thed]

Just chiming in that I noticed this began happening to me within the last 48 hours. I don't have too many live tile apps, but any weather app I've tried doesn't update, and I'm not getting notifications on the "Me" live tile. I uninstalled one disabled background status app, and that doesn't seem to have helped, although it hasn't been that long since I uninstalled. Hopefully in a half hour or so that weather app will update.

It's worth mentioning that the issues that femanuele, I, and possibly others had were strictly related to background tasks, not push notifications. For example, I use WeatherLive. It uses push notifications to update the weather data and a background task to update the location. So for me, the weather would update just fine, but the location would not. I also have Pro Sports Scores and a Google Reader app pinned to start. Pro Sports Scores uses push notifications and updated just fine. The reader app uses background tasks and did not update.

I'm not sure what Weather flow uses to update the tile so this may or may not be the same issue.

Edit: after looking at Weather Flow in the Marketplace it looks like it does not use push notifications. So it must be using background tasks. Looks like it could be the same issue.