802118 - Improve update detection in update service in WiFi-only environments

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: General, defect)

Description

[Sebastian Hengst [:aryx] (needinfo me if it's about an intermittent or backout)]

Firefox for Android trunk nightly 20121012, Android 4.1.1, Google Nexus S

Since the switch to the android update service in bug 786380 I hardly get updates (and a substantial part of the download fails, likely due to connection loss). The device only connects via Wifi to the internet and my browsing session last between 1 and 20 minutes. Wifi gets turned on and off before accessing it, updates for apps installed via Google Play are shown more often. Twice it has taken a week until I got the next update for Fennec.

Comment 1

[Aaron Train [:aaronmt]]

Snorp?

Comment 2

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

So the device only has a connection to the internet for a few minutes and only during your browsing session? That would mean that the scheduled update checks are likely to fail. We could fix this in a few different ways. Probably the most reliable one would be to listen to notifications for network changes, and once you connect to the network we could check for updates if we are overdue.

Comment 3

[walter]

Tangentially related potential use case for relevant developer pondering:
 - Very rare internet connectivity for a group of devices (eg. remote location).
 - One device travels elsewhere, receives an update, returns with a signed update. The device could be able to share the update over ad-hoc wifi connections with its peers (eg. wifi via 'connection sharing').
 - Search could be triggered via current 'search for updates'
 - In the developing world where downloads are slow and access points often shared (very slow at peak times) this could be very useful. Overall, not too dissimilar to the use case described on this thread.

Comment 4

[walter]

Filed ~related bug 945047

Comment 5

[BMO Automation]

We have completed our launch of our new Firefox on Android. The development of the new versions use GitHub for issue tracking. If the bug report still reproduces in a current version of [Firefox on Android nightly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fenix) an issue can be reported at the [Fenix GitHub project](https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/). If you want to discuss your report please use [Mozilla's chat](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Matrix#Connect_to_Matrix) server https://chat.mozilla.org and join the [#fenix](https://chat.mozilla.org/#/room/#fenix:mozilla.org) channel.