topic Issues with Android mobile app, Geofencing unreliable in Arlo Q

Issues with Android mobile app, Geofencing unreliable

eyyot — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 15:41:16 GMT

Here's my perspective: I am disappointed Arlo Q owner since around 3 weeks. I am also Android developer myself and I don't like the experience I'm getting with your app. I get the feeling (backed up by facts) that the development team responsible for the product does not do their job right and I think it's time for you to take a proper action.

There are a few things I don't like about the app in general (e.g. no caching, slowliness, no proper timeout handling etc.), but I can live with them, they're an area for improvement, it's understandable. What is NOT acceptable in any case, however, is the fact that the Arlo app is TOTALLY outdated. It does not even support Android 6 (a two years old system from 2015!) features. The lack of support for "runtime permissions", for example, is a reason for shame.

Even worse: did you even care to test it on Android 8? Yes, it's been already publicly released! And the preview platform for developers was available for you since May. Yet the geofencing, a super-important key feature is unreliable due to the way the background processing is now handled by the system (that's my guess, maybe a different bug causes the problem anyway - that would be even funnier).

Is there any kind of product ownership going on or you're just outsourcing the development to some students and don't care about product quality at all? Let me just rephrase it before you actually pass this feedback to the product team, which I really hope you will: there were no technical obstacles, implementation difficulties, etc. which led to the current state of the app. The team was simply lazy and/or the product ownership does not exist.

I would not buy the Arlo Q camera if I knew about the app quality before.

Looking forward to hear from you about your actual plans to properly support the latest version of Android. I'm very curious, just like other people reading this.

Thank you for your time.

Best regards,

e.j.

Re: Issues with Android mobile app, Geofencing unreliable

JamesC — Tue, 29 Aug 2017 15:41:32 GMT

eyyot,

The app is designed to work on Android devices running 4.2.2 or higher. Take a look here for more information: What are the minimum requirements for installing and using my Arlo system?

What issue are you experiencing with Geofencing that is making it unreliable? Some users have reported issues due to battery saving settings on their device, after making the arlo mobile app an exception, they were able to resolve these issues.

JamesC

Issues with Android mobile app, Geofencing unreliable

eyyot — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 17:02:34 GMT

When are you going to fix the geofencing? How long will it take?

Bug reproduction steps:

1. Set my home address.

2. Set radius to medium.

3. Mode is set to "Geofencing".

4. Away mode is set to "Armed". Home Mode is set to "Disarmed".

5. I am at home - both Arlo app and Google maps correctly show my location!

6. YET THE CAMERA IS ARMED and I keep getting the alerts!!!!

What is wrong with your development process?! When are you going to fix geofencing issues on Android app? You took the money, you promised a feature and it DOES NOT WORK as intended!

Sincerely,

Your frustrated customer

Re: Issues with Android mobile app, Geofencing unreliable

JamesC — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 17:03:25 GMT

Try disabling all devices within your enabled devices list in geofencing settings, save, and then enable all devices again. Do you still see the same behavior?

JamesC