Android persistent socket connection rules

Since there has been some interest in this question and no confirmations, I will just respond now. It has been a while since the tests were done, and a production level solution has been created and rigorously tested. Removing the wake lock still helped the battery and no other issues were found such as missing ping requests or incoming notifications, so that is the only validation that I received on the said assumptions.

Additional Things to Note:

• In the OnReceive method of the BroadcastReceiver for the pinging alarm, if you are not directly calling on the socket (spawning a new thread or intent), you will need to hold a wake lock until the ping request is finished. Android holds a wake lock only until OnReceive returns, after that it is possible(but rare) that the CPU may sleep before the ping is finished.

• Use a High Performance Wifi Lock if the notifications are sensitive.

• There was one other device specific issue that affected the solution, it is covered here.

Update

Ran into the following issue with Android 5.1 : Android Issue

Update 2

Need to code around Doze mode for Android 6.0 : Doze Mode