iOS connect app eventually loses connectivity

I've noticed that if I don't touch/use the Garmin Connect app for a few days on iOS that it loses connectivity with the server, meaning that fitness data is no longer synced and Comm.makeJSONRequests don't complete.

Opening up the Connect app fixes the issue.

I'm wondering is this expected behavior or a bug?

I hope it's just a bug because for Note2Watch the expectation is that the user can swipe over to the widget anytime and get refreshed data. This no longer seems to hold if the backgrounded Connect app is in a disconnected state, however. It requires the user to get their phone, open up the app to re-establish connectivity, then swipe over to the widget--all a bit cumbersome.

Thoughts?
  • Apologies for my delayed response--I'm checking with the GCM team on this one because I'm not certain whether this is by design. I imagine that there's some kind of session key that expires after a while, but I'll find out for sure and let you know when I hear back.
  • It looks like this behavior is related to iOS. iOS can freely “suspend” an app running in the background when it wants to deallocate resources, or move resources to a new app. Bringing the app to the foreground makes the app an “Active app” again. So if the OS suspends GCM when it's in the background, it can lose its background connection with the Garmin Connect server.