iPhone background bacon ranging stopping as of screen PW lock issue

0
votes

We have an IOS bacon ranging app that works just fine in background on ipad air and mini even when the screen PW locks.

We have a blocker bug with iPhones 5S/6 which as of password screen lock, beacon ranging stops. (We have set the NSDefaults plist attributes to NSFileProtectionNone, so that is not the issue.)

The beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler keep alive forever hack does not work for more than a couple minutes.

Questions: How can we get app on an iphone ranging beacons in background after screen password locks (which I think makes the app state inactive)?

1
backgroundibeacon

1 Answers

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votes

When the lock screen is displayed, an iOS app is not in the foreground, and limits on how long it is allowed to run in the background kick in.

Using the beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler "hack", an app can only range for beacons in the background for 180 seconds after the lock screen comes up, or a beacon entry/exit event occurs. So what you are seeing on the iPhone is expected behavior. This is a limit imposed by the OS and not a bug.

You can read more about how this works, along with other alternatives here:

http://developer.radiusnetworks.com/2014/11/13/extending-background-ranging-on-ios.html