Around 1:30 AM on May 23, 2020, a large number of Samsung phone users in China experienced severe issues including freezes, infinite reboots, and forced entries into Recovery Mode. Improper handling by users led to data loss, and the incident quickly became a trending topic on social media platforms like Zhihu, with service centers overwhelmed.

Social media responses ranged from frustration to anger, with some comparing the incident to the Note 7 battery disaster, “charging-gate,” or “green-screen-gate.” Some predicted Samsung would be forced out of the Chinese market. People lost job offers due to missed calls, others lost valuable data, and some even resorted to smashing their devices in frustration.

As an Android developer, I am not here to pile on Samsung. My goal is to uncover the root cause of this incident and see what we can learn from it. Since it’s a technical failure in the Android system, it’s essential to analyze it from a technical perspective.

The release of MIUI 12 brought a long-standing battle between App developers and ROM developers into the public eye, revealing the intricate details of this technical tug-of-war. As the saying goes, “While the demon rises a foot, the path rises ten feet.” ROM developers, with their higher system-level permissions, generally hold the upper hand. App developers, however, are not easily deterred, employing various “black technologies” for background persistence and cross-app wakeups. Even Google has stepped in to mediate, establishing rules to regulate behavior for both parties. This competition is arguably healthy; a total victory by either side would inevitably lead to stagnation or the loss of useful functionality.

However, the victims of this struggle are undoubtedly the consumers. If App developers succeed, phones become cluttered with persistent background processes that hog CPU and memory. Conversely, if ROM developers are too aggressive, the app experience suffers—a pain well-known to many Android developers.

As discussed later in this article, most smartphone manufacturers have developed their own strategies to handle auto-starts and associated starts. Beyond the technical struggle, there’s the issue of privacy. Baidu’s Robin Li once remarked that “Chinese people are more open about privacy and relatively less sensitive. If they can trade privacy for convenience, safety, or efficiency, they are willing to do so in many cases.” Consider the convenience of copying a phrase in WeChat and having Taobao automatically open to the corresponding item. It’s helpful, isn’t it? But do we really want every app peering into our clipboards?