1479346 - Awesomescreen turns blank after the app has been open for too long

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Awesomescreen, defect)

Description

[Daniel Jonsson]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Fedora; Linux x86_64; rv:61.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/61.0
Build ID: 20180710113641

Steps to reproduce:

1. Use Firefox.
2. Leave it open in the background (i.e. don't swipe away the app).
3. After some hours, perhaps after a night of sleep, open Firefox.
4. Open a new tab.
5. The newly opened tab is blank, where the Awesomescreen is supposed to be.


Actual results:

The newly opened tab is blank, where the Awesomescreen is supposed to be.


Expected results:

The Awesomescreen should be displayed regardless of long the app has been opened in the background.

I have attached a video where you can see the behavior. What I am demonstrating in the video:

1. Open Firefox, which has been in the background over the night.
2. Open a new tab, which is blank.
3. Swipe away Firefox.
4. Open Firefox.
5. Open a new tab, which is now filled with the Awesomescreen.

Comment 1

[Daniel Jonsson]

Attachment: Video recording of the behavior

Comment 2

[Sorina Florean [:sflorean]]

Thanks for the report!

Tested with Nokia 6(Android 7.1.1) and Xiaomi Mi4i9Android 5.0.2) following the steps from the description on release build and Nightly and couldn't reproduce the issue. When the app was opened from the background all the pages were loaded correctly and no blank screen was displayed. And the app was in the background for some time.

Could you please re-check with the latest Nightly build? You can install it from Google Play. Also, what device and Android version are you using? Do you have some add-ons installed? Thanks

Comment 3

[Daniel Jonsson]

Hi Sorina,

My device is a Nokia 8 running Android 8.1.0, with only uBlock Origin activated among the add-ons in Firefox.

I downloaded Nightly from Google Play, installed the add-on uBlock Origin, and was able reproduce the issue, see the second attached video. What I did to reproduce the issue:

1. Did some browsing, i.e.: open some web sites, do some Google searching, navigate to some of the results, scroll around on some pages. In the end I had the following web sites open: https://www.fz.se/, https://unsplash.com/, https://www.idg.se/, https://www.flashback.org/, https://sv.wikipedia.org/. I scrolled a lot on Unsplash (it has endless scrolling), so it probably consumed quite a bit of storage and/or RAM for all images.
2. Did various other things on the phone, e.g. use the regular Firefox and other apps, with Nightly in the background.
2. Left Nightly in the background from the evening to the next morning.
3. In the video, I open Nightly, which is still open in the background, and the new tab page is now blank.
4. After swiping away Nightly and opening it again, the new tab page is now populated by the Awesomescreen.

Comment 4

[Daniel Jonsson]

Forgot to also list https://twitter.com/ among the open web sites.

Comment 5

[Daniel Jonsson]

Attachment: Video recording of the behavior in Nightly

Video recording of the behavior in Nightly

Comment 6

[Sorina Florean [:sflorean]]

Thanks for the detailed information! Stefan, do you have time to investigate this issue based on comment 3 and also, check the video?

Comment 7

[Stefan Deiac]

Hi, thanks Sorina. 
I tried to reproduce this issue on latest Nightly following the steps with Nokia 6 (Android 7.1.1) and I have arrived on same result as you Sorina. 
Daniel, do you have some additional steps? Also do you have some specific settings on your device or on Firefox?

Comment 8

[Daniel Jonsson]

Hi Stefan,

When I installed Nightly, the only customization I did was to install the add-on uBlock Origin. I didn't sign in to Firefox Sync nor anything else. So it was a very clean experience.

I cannot think of any device settings that would have had any impact on Firefox. I mean, I have only done standard things, such as tweak the keyboard, turn adaptive brightness on, etc.

Do you often swipe away apps? I usually leave everything open in the background. I don't know if that has anything to do with it.

Do you regularly use Firefox on your phone? I use it very often, and this bug happens frequently, and it is more or less daily that I have to swipe away Firefox and re-open it to regain the Awesomescreen. If you are only using the phone to test Nightly, it might be too light of usage to trigger the bug, perhaps.

Comment 9

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

This looks like bug 1472140 which was fixed in the last week. Are you still encountering this on Firefox Nightly?

Comment 10

[Mira Lobontiu (Android QA)]

Hi,

I was not able to reproduce the issue. I let Firefox Nightly in the background for 8 hours.

Tested with:
Browser / Version: Firefox Mobile Nightly 63.0a1 (2018-08-27)
Operating System: Nexus 6P (Android 8.1.0)

Thank you!

Comment 11

[Stefan Deiac]

Hi, Daniel. Can you retry with the latest version of Nightly and come with the results? Also, can you provide us a logcat to see where the problem occur? I'll wait for your update, thanks.

Comment 12

[Stefan Deiac]

Due to the lack of additional info, I'll close this issue as Incomplete. If someone can provide more information regarding this issue, please reopen it, thanks.