>The author's validity comes into question with how alarming the tone of this post is

What, exactly, is so alarming about the tone? I'd also be curious as to why an app is accessing my contacts so often. There might even be valid battery-life concerns.

>and how he gave the company a week to respond to a non-important question

It's important to the customer. I guess this is lost on the SV people who no longer believe that people from the company selling you a service should actually be accessible. But there was a time when if you had a question, like "why is your product using so many of my phone's resources?" you could have it answered. A week certainly isn't unreasonable, especially for a journalist.

>tells me all I need to know about this.

Disagree with review; dismiss article? Do you think there's some kind of agenda?

I think the OP was insinuating that the writer is not technically competent enough to be authoritatively evaluating technology to such a degree.

The article's tone isn't alarming, but I'd guess the OP meant alarmist, which kind of fits.

The author's argument certainly doesn't present a clear path from the inciting incident to any of the conclusions, so I also feel comfortable dismissing it. There isn't much use for emotional persuasive writing about technological issues outside of handwringing, and handwringing is boring to many of us.

You seem to be comparing a markedly positive device review by TNW to a markedly negative one by Ars and inferring that there's some agenda. What would that agenda be? The post is about the frequency with which Whatsapp polls the contacts list. The Blackberry DTEK app simply happened to be the only one that could provide that information. Blog posts usually have links to related content to drive page views, so linking to their BB review isn't exactly some shady form of advertising.

I'm not saying there's an agenda or any advertising. This is just an example of one of my pet peeves about the Android ecosystem as a developer on it, low level "power users" who don't really know what they're doing complaining about things that scare them.

I mentioned the Blackberry article not because I think it's shady advertising, but just to point that out from my perspective anyone who thinks the Blackberry Priv is a great "one of the best Android handsets" simply does either not have enough exposure to the Android ecosystem or is just someone whose opinion I don't hold highly.

OK, as you're an Android developer, I understand where you're coming from. However, Android users in 2015 pay hundreds of dollars for phones that can barely manage 4-5 hours of on-screen time. That is due to many factors, but users have a right to question if background app activity is to blame. Usually there isn't much quantitative information to work with, but in this case, we do have some. And it's sparked an informative discussion on HN, so I think people have benefited overall.

As for their opinion of the Priv, it's an opinion, and there have been varying opinions about it in the tech press. The way your comment was phrased, it sounded like your disagreement with their Priv review was a factor in your evaluation of their Whatsapp article.

> Usually there isn't much quantitative information to work with, but in this case, we do have some.

As mentioned by jc4p, that tiny bit of information has provided the author with just enough rope with which to hang himself.

Technical people know first-hand that the wrong information can easily lead you away from the source of a problem. Some (many?) slightly-technical people don't understand that screen-on time and cpu-awake time [0] are the major contributors to battery drain. If you provide a raw number for $ACTIONS_TAKEN [1] without establishing whether that number is in the normal range for that app and without tying that number to actual battery drain by correlating it to actual CPU or backlight usage, you're very likely to waste people's time on a wild goose chase.

When making reports for non- or slightly-technical people, you usually have to be careful to filter out irrelevant information.

[0] IIRC, both of which are stats that have been provided in Android for at least the past several major versions, and probably back to -at least- Gingerbread.

[1] In this case, number of times contacts have been accessed by a particular app.

This is funny, one of my pet peeves of the iPhone ecosystem has always been low level power users (bloggers) who praise the device but don't actually have a clue what are they talking about.

I'm not saying this confrontationally. Now that you have pointed it, I actually think you have a point.

What praises do you find unwarranted? I'm just coming into the iOS ecosystem from years on Android.

There was a moment when I wasn't neither in the Android not iOS camp, and I used to follow a Apple blog because I was fond of my 3G iTouch. It was one of the most popular iOS blogs in my language and they got strong by translating tutorials on how to jailbreak your devices.

I started becoming disengaged with them when they started repeating the Apple line of "Jaibreaking is bad, mm'key?" even though they continued to post tutorials about it, because that's what drove the visits (I wanted to jailbreak my device because I can't stand the standard iOS app menu interface. Besides, my device, my rules). The "f*ck it" moment came when they did a "report" of the latest apple iPhone charger, praising it's construction, it's electrical insulation, and whatnot. I'm an EE, and could easily tell that it was all BS and they had absolutely no idea what they were talking about.

I find that this happens regularly in the apple ecosystem, people follow the Apple talk too eagerly for my taste, and don't usually have a technical clue about what are they talking about. All the retina display marketing thing is a good example. Anyway, this applies to the second tier bloggers and commenters (huge majority), first tier, even if they follow the apple line to the letter, usually know what are they talking about.

The author was challenging the technical competency of the author using Ars as a comparison. While Ars is involved in a journalistic race race to the bottom (someone used a drone/need a ghostbusters movie with 4 women in it/etc), their technical articles are very good. I think it's a weak comparison to criticise 1 article and dismiss all others.