Does Android support near real time push notification?

user_52175 0
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I recently learned about the ability of iPhone apps to receive nearly instantaneous notifications to apps notifications to apps.

This is provided in the form of push notifications, a bespoke protocol which keeps an always on data connection to the iPhone and messages binary packets to the app, which pops up alerts incredibly quickly, between 0.5 - 5 seconds from server app send to phone app response time. This is sent as data - rather than SMS - in very very small packets charged as part of the data plan not as incoming messages.

I would like to know if, using Android, there is either a similar facility, or whether it's possible to implement something close to this using Android APIs. To clarify, I define similar as:

  • Not an SMS message, but some data driven solution
  • As real time as is possible
  • Is scalable, i.e., as the server part of a mobile app, I could notify thousands of app instances in seconds

I appreciate the app could be pull based, HTTP request/response style, but ideally I don't want to be polling that heavily just to check for notification; besides which it's like drip draining the data plan.

push-notification android
16 Answers

Have a look at the Xtify platform. Looks like this is what they are doing,

user_2833770

I cannot find where I read it at, but I believe gmail utilizes an open TCP connection to do the e-mail push.

Will_534980

As GTalk is gone from the SDK, it might be a good idea to make a 'standard' push messaging system. That way, only one service has to run, only one extra tcp connection needs to be open. Applications should talk to this service using Intents and should first request permission to send and receive notification from the service. The service should then notify the user a new application wants to send and receive messages. The user will then grant or deny permission, so he stays in control. The application will then register an action + category to the service, so the service knows how to deliver the pushed message.

Would the a good idea or not?

user_1203090
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