SkieWhy does Skie ask for a battery optimisation exemption on managed devices?
Android's battery optimisation can put apps to sleep, delay their alarms and slow their network use. Skie is exempted on managed devices so rule updates, presence reports and instant syncs are not held back. It is applied during setup as the device owner, so nobody has to tap through a prompt on each device.
Battery optimisation, sometimes called Doze or app standby, is Android's way of stretching battery life. When a device sits still with the screen off, the system groups background work and delays it. That is sensible for a game or a shopping app. It is a problem for software whose job is to stay in touch.
On a managed device Skie asks to be exempt from that treatment. Because Skie is the device owner, this is handled during provisioning rather than by a person approving a dialog on every tablet. The exemption is one part of the reliability stack: the background service, the watchdog worker, the presence alarm of about every 4 minutes and the instant sync on reconnect or screen-on.
Without the exemption, a tablet left on a desk overnight could miss alarms and look silent on the dashboard even though nothing was wrong. With it, last-seen times stay meaningful and rule changes arrive when they should.
Skie does not claim a battery impact figure, and you should treat any such number from any vendor with care, since it depends on the model, the screen, the network and use. What you can do is watch the low battery share in Insights and the battery flag on a device page, and compare models.
Practical tip: if one model is draining faster than the others, mention it to the Skie team with the model name. Model profiles are set per model, so it can be looked at once and applied to every device of that type.