Proper way to tackle and resolve “Excessive network usage (background)”

Question

Problem Background

Currently, we have facing \"Excessive network usage (background)\" from Android Vital report. Last 30 days is 0.04%

Answer 1

For your first question, "Excessive network usage (background)" is triggered when:

... an app is sending and receiving a combined total of 50 MB per hour while running in the background in 0.10% of battery sessions. A battery session refers to the interval between two full battery charges.

Source

To identify what is causing this, try using Battery Historian to analyse your app's battery usage over time. For us, it helped identify a repeating wakelock we didn't intend to introduce.

Here's an example of the output, showing us that excessive BLE scanning is causing a major battery impact:

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For your second question, WorkManager is likely what you are after, as you correctly identified. This allows you to schedule a task, as well as a window you'd like it to occur in. Using this allows the OS to optimise task scheduling for you, along with other app's jobs. For example, instead of 6 apps all waking the device up every 10 minutes for their hourly task, it can be scheduled to happen for all 6 apps at the same time, increasing the time spent in doze mode.

Notice the screenshot above includes a "JobScheduler Jobs" tab. After running an analysis you'll be able to see how your jobs are actually performing:

I've previously used Firebase JobDispatcher with great success (tutorial I wrote), which extends the OS' JobScheduler API and is ultimately similar.

I see you're using WorkManager now (Jetpack's version of JobDispatcher), but with 8 seconds there's no chance for the OS to optimise your jobs. Is there any capacity of scheduling them with a minimum of a few seconds, and as large a maximum as possible?

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Further improvements

However, your current task scheduling setup may not be the root cause. Here's a few additional ideas that may provide the battery improvement you need. The usefulness of them will become clearer after you've run Battery Historian and identified the root cause:

1. Consider whether wifi-only is a feasible default / option for data syncing. You'll experience better battery usage, fewer network issues, and likely better customer satisfaction.

2. Why does a note taking app need to sync a few hundred MB? Can you perhaps just sync the note that has changed, instead of the entire list of notes every time?