this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2023
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Why in the hell do push notifications need to be generated on google/apple servers? I'm sure our phones are more than capable of processing the information from the app to the lock screen.
The general design is a single system component wakes up the device when it’s sleeping (such as during screen off) and checks in with Apple/Google servers to see if there are any notifications.
Why?
Imagine if every app needed to wake up your device and make network requests to check for notifications etc. The more apps, the faster your battery drain as a queue of apps grows, constantly waking up your device to call home and check for notifications.
Hence Push Notification Services. Instead, developers send a notification to Apple/Google who then pool those notifications with notifications from other apps/developers. Then the single notification service on your device periodically wakes up the device and checks for notifications.
Additionally, push notification systems by OSs are designed with efficiency and minimal networks requests and bandwidth utilisation so an app can’t chew up user’s data quotas due to being poorly written.
TL;DR: It saves battery and network data, enabling users to use more apps.
App server > apple push server > app > lock screen.
For battery efficiency reasons it's better to use the apple push server that's hooked into ios rather than your own push server
It's the difference between polling notifications, where each app wakes up once a minute and goes to ask their respective servers if there are any new notifications, and push notifications which, as the name suggests, are pushed to your phone once they arrive so those apps can sleep.