Does Android not have the concept of “local notifications” where you can tell the OS to schedule a notification to be sent to the app to wake it up instead of being in the background the whole time?
However, the implementations of the API are questionable.
Some calls to that API on some OEMs device round alarms to the nearest minute, some to the nearest ten minutes.
WHY? What benefit does that serve?
Edit: It's become the new '911'... Family Guy Joke!
Because China.
Having lived in China for a few months with an Android phone I can with absolute certainty tell you that this is needed over there. The amount of garbage apps, even from big companies like baidu is enourmous!
And without a Google playstore, or play services, or play safety thing it is an absolute wild-west of background alarms, API calls, battery draining and whatnot.
Like are apps setting alarms for every 3 seconds or something for no reason??
Not literally "alarms", like the ones that ring?
Without this restriction, how long before an app maker schedules their alarm every millisecond?
Also some manufacturers cancel alarms when the user swipes away an app (which some users do constantly to keep the recent apps list "clean")
I appreciate that in some cases apps need to be in the notification bar in order to remain running. I also appreciate those like Tasker that have the option to hide their icons or use "empty" icons (so nothing shows).