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Comment by smabie | Hacker News Reader

Isn't an unstable network experience better than no network experience?

A lot of apps have cached experiences that they'll only show you if you have no network connection. If the app detects a very weak LTE connection, it'll try to load data over the network. That means that on a weak connection, I often end up being served nothing, rather than the data that's already cached on device.

As a tangent, I feel that a lot of these problems are fundamentally because engineers don't understand how poorly their software performs on unstable networks. Unless you live in a large metropolitan area with a well used underground transit network (in the USA, I suppose NYC would be the only qualifying city... sigh), you'd likely never experience these symptoms on a daily basis.

If I “download” music for offline listening in Spotify, in the highest possible quality, and I attempt to listen to that music on a unstable network, the app will not work. It will wait for me to completely lose the connection before playing the cached files. Have noticed similar bugs existing in other software

...or you live in a dense suburb where they never bothered to put up towers, or a rural area where towers are more scarce, or any where that you have to go in a building without wifi..

I don't honestly believe many developers don't experience this a lot. It's probably just such a transitory experience that it's not worth the rearchitecting required to really solve it.

I’d believe they don’t experience it at their desks at work. And they probably aren’t often thinking about work when they’re at home or visiting rural areas.

> Unless you live in a large metropolitan area with a well used underground transit network

Or anywhere more than ~50km from the nearest town. I dunno what coverage is like in the U.S. but in parts of Australia it’s not uncommon to lose reception when country driving.

"Isn't an unstable network experience better than no network experience?"

Yes, you would think ... but that is not the case.

QA and design of modern mobile apps and software - and even devices and appliances - neglects the testing of bad network connectivity.

Both my physical Sonos devices and, for instance, the apple-provided podcasts app, can handle being fully offline reasonably well. On the other hand, if you start dropping ~50% of packets they lose their mind and (in the case of Apples podcast app) freeze or crash.

It drains the battery really quickly in my experience. On my (admittedly old) iphone a 30 minute subway journey without airplane mode will drain about 10%.

Also even if i'm listening to music I have downloaded locally, Apple Music will do a system-wide popup complaining that it lost cellular connection. Sometimes in Safari a webpage that was downloaded at the station will suddenly erase itself and attempt to refresh itself upon losing connection. Those are usually the kinds of ad-ridden sites that are making nonstop ajax calls, but sometimes that's what i'm reading.

Not for apps like Audible which (this is my guess based on personal experience) prevents you from doing anything if you seem to have connectivity but can’t get a real response. Offline mode is simply more stable, unless you need to sync status from another device.

Audible is terrible for this. The parking lot at work is situated juuuust right to the point that when I'm leaving the office, my phone thinks its connected but has no actual connectivity. Audible sits there trying to sync the storefront and whatever else instead of just playing my damn book when I turn on my car to leave for the day.

Depending on what you're doing. Many apps that reach out to the internet at launch will hang if there's an unstable connection, but will recognize when there's no connection and open in an offline mode.

In my experience, no not at all, as it causes my phone to drain its battery exceptionally fast while it thrashes the modem in a frantic search for signal.

Yes! I don't know why nobody talks about this. If I don't go into airplane mode, half of my daily battery drain is from two half-hour trips in the underground subway. It's insane.

By far, my #1 wish for my iPhone would be a mode to basically "detect subway networks constantly changing" and just give up trying. Like, if it observes all cell and wifi networks disappearing entirely together with movement... then totally new ones appearing... every 45 seconds... just stop. And wait passively until there's some kind of heuristic indicating you're above ground, before trying to establish new connections with everything.

Obviously make this optional, but I turn on airplane mode every time I enter the subway and turn it off after I leave, just so I don't have to worry about running out of battery during the day otherwise in case I take 3-4 trips.

Very good ideas! As hobby I like to automate mundane tasks. I’m applying a similar approach by using iPhone Shortcuts app. See https://twitter.com/xiwenc/status/1578670843584204801?s=46&t... for how i did it by automatically turning off/on low power mode, wifi, etc. Perhaps you’re inspired by it.

Not if you're conserving battery life I suppose..

I find that my music/video streaming apps work a lot better with no network than with an unstable network.

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