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I have 3rd party messaging apps Line and Whatsapp pinned to my start screen and I quite often find myself getting large delays in receiving message updates. I am not sure if this is a limitation of the OS or a bug in the application--I know WP7 has limitations.

Can 3rd party messaging apps run all of the time in the background (regardless of how many other apps are open) and still receive real-time messages in Windows Phone 8?

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  • I use Line and a few other messengers, and for me this problem only happens with Line. Since push notifications should be instantaneous, I chalked it up to Line being a incredibly popular start-up with little focus on the WP8 front (the app is quite different on iOS and Android). I figured it was a resource issue on their end, as a server on their end is part of the push processes. – Louis Waweru May 29 '13 at 17:56
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Short answer Yes,

Microsoft explains on one of their developer pages that a third party can register to send push notifications using Microsofts communication channel to the phone.

The Microsoft Push Notification Service in Windows Phone is an asynchronous, best-effort service that offers third-party developers a channel to send data to a Windows Phone app from a cloud service in a power-efficient manner.

This works on both Windows Phone 7.x and 8

If an app developer tries implement their own notification service using the background tasks, there will be inherent delays as these are severely limited in how often they can run.

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  • According to msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsphone/develop/… it is possible to send messages immediately or delayed up to 900 seconds (15 minutes) After seeing the chart on msdn, I would believe they have their notification service misconfigured as it is both possible to send an instant message and it is possible to know if the message failed and they should try again. On another note, I use talk.to for a messaging app and I get messages in under a minute. – caschw May 24 '13 at 12:48
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I have Skype on my phone and it often buzzes with a notification of a skype-chat message just moments before that message appears on the Skype client running on my PC. Similarly if I am mentioned on Twitter I often get a buzz and a message at the top of the screen on the phone before MetroTwit on the PC shows it to me.

Therefore it is most certainly possible for messages to arrive in real time. But I don't know what APIs the apps you're using have employed.

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