Android AlarmManager setExact() is not exact

Question

I need to plan sheduled task every 10 minutes.

As in Lollipop and higher version setRepeating() is inexact, I use setExact() and (on alarm

Answer 1

Probably a possible workaround could be something like this: you schedule the Alarm about 1 minute before the expected time, than you use a Handler.postDelayed to cover the remaining time.

Here you can find an example of this kind of implementation. The activity just set-up the first alarm:

public class MainActivity extends AppCompatActivity {

    private static int WAIT_TIME = 60*1000; //1 minute
    public static int DELAY_TIME = 10*60*1000; // delay between iterations: 10min
    public static String UPDATE_TIME_KEY = "update_time_key";


    @Override
    protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.activity_main);
        setAlarm(this,(new Date().getTime())+DELAY_TIME);
    }

    public static void setAlarm(Context context, long delay) {

        long fireDelay = delay-WAIT_TIME;
        SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(context);
        sharedPreferences.edit().putLong(UPDATE_TIME_KEY,delay).apply();

        Intent startIntent = new Intent(context, UpdateReceiver.class);
        PendingIntent pendingIntent = PendingIntent.getBroadcast(context, 1, startIntent,PendingIntent.FLAG_UPDATE_CURRENT );
        AlarmManager alarmManager = (AlarmManager) context.getApplicationContext().getSystemService(Context.ALARM_SERVICE);
        int ALARM_TYPE = AlarmManager.RTC;
        if (Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= Build.VERSION_CODES.KITKAT) {
            alarmManager.setExact(ALARM_TYPE, fireDelay, pendingIntent);
        } else {
            alarmManager.set(ALARM_TYPE, fireDelay, pendingIntent);
        }
    }

}

than the receiver continues the loop:

public class UpdateReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver {

    @Override
    public void onReceive(final Context context, Intent intent) {
        Log.e("RECEIVED","RECEIVED");
        SharedPreferences sharedPreferences = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(context);
        long fireTime = sharedPreferences.getLong(MainActivity.UPDATE_TIME_KEY, (new Date()).getTime());

        long fireDelay  =(fireTime-(new Date().getTime())>0)?fireTime-(new Date().getTime()):0;

        (new Handler()).postDelayed(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                Log.e("RECEIVED","PERFORMED");
                MainActivity.setAlarm(context,(new Date()).getTime()+MainActivity.DELAY_TIME);
            }
        },fireDelay);

    }

}

I hope it helped.