989655 - Audio from Web Apps is paused/disabled when screen is turned off (e.g. with SoundCloud, News Podcasts)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox for Android Graveyard :: Web Apps (PWAs), defect, P1)

Description

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

STR:
 1. Install https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/soundcloud (using Firefox nightly on Android)
 2. Open the newly-installed webapp.
 3. Tap any of the audio clips available at the bottom of the front page (under "Explore the newest sounds")
 4. Tap the Play button (you might have to tap it twice to get it to actually activate)
 5. After audio is playing, turn off your phone's screen

ACTUAL RESULTS: After a second or two, the audio stops. It won't resume until you turn your screen on again.

EXPECTED RESULTS: Audio should not have stopped.

NOTE: I get EXPECTED RESULTS (audio will play nicely, with the screen off) if I load http://m.soundcloud.com *directly* in Firefox nightly (instead of using the web app). So at first glance, this appears to be a restriction imposed by the Web App bundling.

Comment 1

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

I can also reproduce with "News Podcasts": https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/news-podcast-1

(Audio turns off when I turn off the screen, when I install that app and start playing something from inside it.  As with SoundCloud, if I visit the site (http://www.audio29.com//radio/index_client.html?NEWS ) directly in Firefox nightly and play some audio, it keeps playing correctly after I turn off the screen.)

Comment 2

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Also: I'm using up-to-date nightly (31.0a1, 2014-03-29) on a Nexus 4.

Comment 3

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

We support the audio channel api only in apps:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI/AudioChannels

That should provide consistency with b2g. If it doesn't, we should fix it.

Comment 4

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

It apparently isn't consistent. B2G gives me EXPECTED RESULTS* (audio continues playing when screen is turned off).

*More details: I'm running my own B2G trunk build on my unagi; I installed the News Podcasts app from the Marketplace and started playing audio through it, and the audio continued when I turned off my screen.

Comment 5

[Wesley Johnston (:wesj)]

Hmm.. interesting. Since its basically the same code up to the decoder, I wonder if we're getting different content than b2g is, or if we're just reporting the wrong audio channel to gecko somehow...

Comment 6

[Myk Melez [:myk] [@mykmelez]]

Per bug 1235869, we're going to disable the Android web runtime, so we won't fix this bug in it.

(This is part of a bulk resolution of bugs in the Firefox for Android::Web Apps component, from which I attempted to exclude bugs that are not specific to the runtime, but it's possible that I included one accidentally.  If so, I'm sorry, and please reopen the bug!)