Database Info

Apps starting on their own.

Apps starting on their own. Anyone have these issues? All the att stuff is gone but the video and music player are open randomly as well as quik office. I can see gmail opening and others tho check for updates
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

Yes, this annoys the hell out of me. I wish I knew what to do to stop it. I've even downloaded an app that's supposed to stop things from auto-starting, and it doesn't even work.

Search for StartUp Auditor on the market, it may work for you.
Android Market description
Startup Auditor is one of the original task killer & task manager apps. It is a boot monitor and startup monitor tool which displays a list of applications you may disable.
Terminate processes automatically.
Enable/Disable apps& keep disabled. No root.
Full version eliminates ads and can disable unlimited!
Package: com.vesperaNovus.app.StartupAuditorFree
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

On the advice of this forum I uninstalled my app killer. From time to time I use Android System to see what's running and I notice a number of apps that start themselves. These include the stock music and video players along with Slacker Radio, AT$T Maps, eBay, GPS Status and a dozen others at various times. I don't mean they remain running after exiting, I mean they start without my having used them. What could be causing these apps to start when not called upon? The ones that use GPS put a significant drain on the battery without me knowing it. Any ideas what triggers these apps? I think I'm going back to using an app killer.

Miami_Son said:
On the advice of this forum I uninstalled my app killer. From time to time I use Android System to see what's running and I notice a number of apps that start themselves. These include the stock music and video players along with Slacker Radio, AT$T Maps, eBay, GPS Status and a dozen others at various times. I don't mean they remain running after exiting, I mean they start without my having used them. What could be causing these apps to start when not called upon? The ones that use GPS put a significant drain on the battery without me knowing it. Any ideas what triggers these apps? I think I'm going back to using an app killer.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine does the same thing. I have Advanced task killer on mine. I dont use it to kill apps, just to look and see how much ram is free and whats running. But all kinds of junk opens by itself.

so does anyone have a fix for this?

derek4484 said:
Mine does the same thing. I have Advanced task killer on mine. I dont use it to kill apps, just to look and see how much ram is free and whats running. But all kinds of junk opens by itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What use is free RAM when it is kept free all the time?
AJerman said:
Yes, this annoys the hell out of me. I wish I knew what to do to stop it. I've even downloaded an app that's supposed to stop things from auto-starting, and it doesn't even work.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Use "start up auditor". With personal experience, this only slowed down my system.
dieselstation said:
so does anyone have a fix for this?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is now android works. The way I see this, this is very much similar to "pre-fetch" concept in windows 7.
I have a 6 GB RAM laptop. Base OS uses less than 1.5 GB of RAM. But like an hour or so when I see my RAM usage, its to the tune of 3-4 GB. What I have noticed is that my most frequently/recently used apps are loaded to RAM and kept there idle. Some amount of RAM is always kept free instead of using up all RAM. This way apps start faster. When I load a different memory heavy program, it pushes the existing one out and loads this.
More or less the same in android too. When u go to any task manager app n see the running apps, u'll notice that many of the apps loaded are the ones u use frequently.
These apps do NOT use any CPU. They are just loaded to memory and kept there for quick access.
When I boot up my phone I have like 190+ MB free RAM. Though left in standy mode, within an hour, I see my free RAM fall to 80-120 MB range. I never saw it go less than 80 MB. And the apps in memory are the ones I used the last time, and the ones I use all the time.
Even if u use a task killer to kill these "inactive" apps at intervals, they would be loaded again sooner or later. That's the principle of android. So by using task killers, though u feel u r freeing up memory, in fact, u r only draining ur battery. What's the use of memory if u r not using it effectively.
Don't worry abt free RAM amount. Let android manage it. Systems are intelligent enough these days.
Hope this helps.

All well and good, but when I look at what apps are using the most resources, the GPS-enabled apps are almost always near the top of the list even when I haven't been doing anything with them. That tells me that they are stealing processor time even when not being used and that can't be good for battery usage.

Miami_Son said:
All well and good, but when I look at what apps are using the most resources, the GPS-enabled apps are almost always near the top of the list even when I haven't been doing anything with them. That tells me that they are stealing processor time even when not being used and that can't be good for battery usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Install Spare Parts and see battery usage. Do u see any GPS time under CPU usage. Though my system has all these apps loaded up, they don't show up as using CPU time or any sensors unless I use the app.

Android Memory Management
Android Memory Management
Android is a Linux based OS with 2.6.x kernel, stripped down to handle most tasks pretty well. It uses native open source C libraries that have powered Linux machines for years. All the basic OS operations like I/O, memory management, and so on, are handled by the native stripped-down Linux kernel.
How to use memory for each application
Android’s process and memory management is a little unusual. Like Java and .NET, Android uses its own run time and virtual machine to manage application memory. Unlike either of these frameworks, the Android run time also manages the process lifetimes. Android ensures application responsiveness by stopping and killing processes as necessary to free resources for higher-priority applications.
Each Android application runs in a separate process within its own Dalvik instance, relinquishing all responsibility for memory and process management to the Android run time, which stops and kills processes as necessary to manage resources.
Dalvik and the Android run time sit on top of a Linux kernel that handles low-level hardware interaction including drivers and memory management, while a set of APIs provides access to all of the under- lying services, features, and hardware.
Dalvik Virtual Machine Dalvik is a register-based virtual machine that’s been optimized to ensure that a device can run multiple instances efficiently. It relies on the Linux kernel for threading and low-level memory management.
The Dalvik Virtual Machine
One of the key elements of Android is the Dalvik virtual machine. Rather than use a traditional Java virtual machine (VM) such as Java ME (Java Mobile Edition), Android uses its own custom VM designed to ensure that multiple instances run efficiently on a single device.
The Dalvik VM uses the device’s underlying Linux kernel to handle low-level functionality including security, threading, and process and memory management.
All Android hardware and system service access is managed using Dalvik as a middle tier. By using a VM to host application execution, developers have an abstraction layer that ensures they never have to worry about a particular hardware implementation.
The Dalvik VM executes Dalvik executable files, a format optimized to ensure minimal memory foot- print. The .dex executables are created by transforming Java language compiled classes using the tools supplied within the SDK.
Understanding Application Priority and Process States
The order in which processes are killed to reclaim resources is determined by the priority of the hosted applications. An application’s priority is equal to its highest-priority component.
Where two applications have the same priority, the process that has been at a lower priority longest will be killed first. Process priority is also affected by interprocess dependencies; if an application has a dependency on a Service or Content Provider supplied by a second application, the secondary application will have at least as high a priority as the application it supports.
All Android applications will remain running and in memory until the system needs its resources for other applications.
It’s important to structure your application correctly to ensure that its priority is appropriate for the work it’s doing. If you don’t, your application could be killed while it’s in the middle of something important.
The following list details each of the application states shown in Figure (see the attached image) explaining how the state is determined by the application components comprising it:
Active Processes Active (foreground) processes are those hosting applications with components currently interacting with the user. These are the processes Android is trying to keep responsive by reclaiming resources. There are generally very few of these processes, and they will be killed only as a last resort.
Active processes include:
* Activities in an “active” state; that is, they are in the foreground and responding to user events. You will explore Activity states in greater detail later in this chapter.
* Activities, Services, or Broadcast Receivers that are currently executing an onReceive event handler.
* Services that are executing an onStart, onCreate, or onDestroy event handler.
Visible Processes Visible, but inactive processes are those hosting “visible” Activities. As the name suggests, visible Activities are visible, but they aren’t in the foreground or responding to user events. This happens when an Activity is only partially obscured (by a non-full-screen or transparent Activity). There are generally very few visible processes, and they’ll only be killed in extreme circumstances to allow active processes to continue.
Started Service Processes Processes hosting Services that have been started. Services support ongoing processing that should continue without a visible interface. Because Services don’t interact directly with the user, they receive a slightly lower priority than visible Activities. They are still considered to be foreground processes and won’t be killed unless resources are needed for active or visible processes.
Background Processes Processes hosting Activities that aren’t visible and that don’t have any Services that have been started are considered background processes. There will generally be a large number of background processes that Android will kill using a last-seen-first-killed pat- tern to obtain resources for foreground processes.
Empty Processes To improve overall system performance, Android often retains applications in memory after they have reached the end of their lifetimes. Android maintains this cache to improve the start-up time of applications when they’re re-launched. These processes are rou- tinely killed as required.
How to use memory efficiently
Android manages opened applications which are running in the background, so officially you shouldn’t care about that. This means that it closes the applications when the system needs more memory. However, most android users are not very satisfied with how it does its things because sometimes it leaves too many processes running which causes sluggishness’ in everyday performance. We can use advanced task killer/task manager and it does its job very well.
Source:
Code:
http://mobworld.wordpress.com/2010/07/05/memory-management-in-android/

Still doesn't answer the question of why the OS is starting apps randomly and without need. For instance, I have Titanium Backup and SGS Tools installed, but can't use them because I am not yet rooted. So why do I keep finding both programs started in the process list? Is the app making the call to start? If so, what can I change to stop it? Whatever Android does to manage memory, it just seems stupid for it to load programs that are hardly used without my asking it to.

Miami_Son said:
Still doesn't answer the question of why the OS is starting apps randomly and without need. For instance, I have Titanium Backup and SGS Tools installed, but can't use them because I am not yet rooted. So why do I keep finding both programs started in the process list? Is the app making the call to start? If so, what can I change to stop it? Whatever Android does to manage memory, it just seems stupid for it to load programs that are hardly used without my asking it to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is how the systems work in most systems, not just in android.
Take the new cars for instance. Power is generally sent to brakes when in low gears, though u r not actively engaging them. Why? Since u r at low speeds, higher probability of applying brakes. And when u do apply, since there is already some power already being sent, its faster to brake.
On similar lines is this principle of loading apps into memory in android too. It won't load apps to fill up ur memory. Plus the apps loaded into memory in this way don't use any CPU time (this means no battery usage). This speeds up system.
On a side note, if u feel u really do not need an app, and dont' want android loading that app, get "startup auditor" from market. Select the apps u don't want to persist in memory and don't want to auto start. Beware of one thing here: if u make an app as 'do not persist' in memory, and that app is started manually or by any other app, it would be killed giving FC in the app that's using it.
Note: I coined the term 'do not persist'. I do not have the app anymore to check for the exact term.
Edit: In windows, this pre-fetching is done through a service. And one can disable that service, though not recommended. I am not sure if this is done through a service that is "stoppable" in android.

Possible to stop Weather, etc. from running?

Per the subject, is it possible to prevent things like weather, clock, news, and even updates from running, but keep them around to be run on-demand? Trying to free up memory
Tux,
Jim

Yes. I am using the es file explorer task killer and you can kill any process.

lsu205 said:
Yes. I am using the es file explorer task killer and you can kill any process.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was doing that for awhile, but the processes/services keep coming back. Plus some stuff, like Bluetooth Sharing, Settings, and Email keep appearing, even though I never used them.
I kind of understand from reading about Android memory management, but I'm seeing my memory (using SystemPanel) going down to almost 0, then the Gtab either dies a slow death, or boots back to the TapNTap boot screen (the orange thing).
I've been testing with Startup Auditor Free, but even with that, I can see a bunch of processes/services/apps in memory, even after I try killing them.
Jim

jimcpl said:
I was doing that for awhile, but the processes/services keep coming back. Plus some stuff, like Bluetooth Sharing, Settings, and Email keep appearing, even though I never used them.
I kind of understand from reading about Android memory management, but I'm seeing my memory (using SystemPanel) going down to almost 0, then the Gtab either dies a slow death, or boots back to the TapNTap boot screen (the orange thing).
I've been testing with Startup Auditor Free, but even with that, I can see a bunch of processes/services/apps in memory, even after I try killing them.
Jim
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I guess what I was really hoping for is to find some kind of init script or config file where those services, etc. were configured for startup, so I could go delete them out of there.
Jim

Multitasking / Keeping Apps in foreground state

If i understand Android correctly, it sends applications into a "background" mode when switching tasks? I would like to prevent that. There are some apps (like games or browser) that need quit a bit of time restoring the last state so this would be usefull for some tasks.
Is this possible ?

TyrionWarMage said:
If i understand Android correctly, it sends applications into a "background" mode when switching tasks? I would like to prevent that. There are some apps (like games or browser) that need quit a bit of time restoring the last state so this would be usefull for some tasks.
Is this possible ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, switching to background mode just marks the application as not displaying anything. The way memory management on Android works, if foreground apps (i.e. apps that are actively displaying on the screen) need memory and there's none available, then background apps will be put into a stored state that frees up memory for the foreground apps. Coming back from that stored state is probably what you're noticing. Android also tries to keep a certain amount of unused memory around and will put background apps into stored state to achieve that. We do have pretty limited memory available on this device so some level of pausing is always going to happen. See also: http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
You may be able to reduce how many background tasks are put into storage by tweaking the minfree parameters (using e.g. Autokiller Memory Optimizer from the market) to tell Android to aim for a smaller pool of free space.

Mioze7Ae said:
Well, switching to background mode just marks the application as not displaying anything. The way memory management on Android works, if foreground apps (i.e. apps that are actively displaying on the screen) need memory and there's none available, then background apps will be put into a stored state that frees up memory for the foreground apps. Coming back from that stored state is probably what you're noticing. Android also tries to keep a certain amount of unused memory around and will put background apps into stored state to achieve that. We do have pretty limited memory available on this device so some level of pausing is always going to happen. See also: http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
You may be able to reduce how many background tasks are put into storage by tweaking the minfree parameters (using e.g. Autokiller Memory Optimizer from the market) to tell Android to aim for a smaller pool of free space.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, i'm will give it a try. Is it also possible to max out swap before sending apps to background? I think restoring the ram-state from sd would still be faster for several apps.
Edit: reading your post again, i'm not talking about a tasking switch delay, but apps that completly reload themselves when switching tasks (DolphinMini page load,DungeonHunter as examples). Just to prevent any confusion...

TyrionWarMage said:
Thanks, i'm will give it a try. Is it also possible to max out swap before sending apps to background? I think restoring the ram-state from sd would still be faster for several apps.
Edit: reading your post again, i'm not talking about a tasking switch delay, but apps that completly reload themselves when switching tasks (DolphinMini page load,DungeonHunter as examples). Just to prevent any confusion...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh... Sorry I misunderstood. I don't know anything relevant to that case.

I've spent a few hours trying to find how to make certain Droid apps maintain their foreground state when put in the background with no luck. Perhaps it just can't be done.
I'm thinking of the Cydia iPhone app called Backgrounder which lets you choose which apps maintain foreground state when put into the background.
This is necessary, for example, with a note application where you are switching between taking notes and looking up info. Every time you switch back to the note app, you need to go back into your note, put it in edit mode and navigate to the section of the note you were editing. If it were acting like a foreground app in the background, when switching back to it it would already have your note open and be in edit mode with the cursor where you left off.
K9 mail has a similar problem where if you have an email open, switch to another application, when you go back to K9 it takes you to your inbox again where you have to navigate to the email you had open before switching.
Is there a tool similar to Backgrounder for Android?
Thanks.

nheacock said:
I've spent a few hours trying to find how to make certain Droid apps maintain their foreground state when put in the background with no luck. Perhaps it just can't be done.
I'm thinking of the Cydia iPhone app called Backgrounder which lets you choose which apps maintain foreground state when put into the background.
This is necessary, for example, with a note application where you are switching between taking notes and looking up info. Every time you switch back to the note app, you need to go back into your note, put it in edit mode and navigate to the section of the note you were editing. If it were acting like a foreground app in the background, when switching back to it it would already have your note open and be in edit mode with the cursor where you left off.
K9 mail has a similar problem where if you have an email open, switch to another application, when you go back to K9 it takes you to your inbox again where you have to navigate to the email you had open before switching.
Is there a tool similar to Backgrounder for Android?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Looking for such tool too. Making app to stick with its foreground state even though it is actually in the background. (Make it appear in notification?)

ZDBox is a useful tool... you can download from market its free and the app has the abbility to:
★ Traffic counter: Monthly/daily mobile data usage overview, shows remaining data traffic, detailed data usage information for each app.
★ Do not disturb: Just set days and the time when you need your privacy and you won’t be disturbed by your phone. Set phone to silent, vibration or airplane mode.
★ App lock: Protect apps with a password or pattern, for exmaple your contacts, Facebook, Twitter, Whatsapp,Gmail and so on
★ Task killer: Kill all apps at once, define protected apps which won’t be killed, set auto kill when screen gets locked, mark single or multiple apps to kill
★ history eraser：clean your（Browser history,market search history,Google Map search history,Gmail search history,Clipboard）
★ Notification bar: One tap on the bar shows remaining battery time, running apps, how much data traffic is left and if app lock is active or not. A tap on these informations starts ZDbox.
★ Uninstaller: Shows used/available internal and SD card memory. Apps can be easily uninstalled. Single or multiple (batch) uninstall possible.
★ App to SD: Move apps to your SD card. Single or multiple (batch) move possible. Only for Android 2.2 and 2.3.
★Cache Cleaner:With Cache Cleaner you can clean your cache of phone.protect your secret without a trace.
I hope you can use for keep your running applications with that app...
sorry for my english...

davidequiz said:
★ Task killer: Kill all apps at once, define protected apps which won’t be killed, set auto kill when screen gets locked, mark single or multiple apps to kill
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This will not help since the task killer which kills the background apps in inside the android system not an external one.
We must find a way to control the internal one then...

nheacock said:
I've spent a few hours trying to find how to make certain Droid apps maintain their foreground state when put in the background with no luck. Perhaps it just can't be done.
I'm thinking of the Cydia iPhone app called Backgrounder which lets you choose which apps maintain foreground state when put into the background.
This is necessary, for example, with a note application where you are switching between taking notes and looking up info. Every time you switch back to the note app, you need to go back into your note, put it in edit mode and navigate to the section of the note you were editing. If it were acting like a foreground app in the background, when switching back to it it would already have your note open and be in edit mode with the cursor where you left off.
K9 mail has a similar problem where if you have an email open, switch to another application, when you go back to K9 it takes you to your inbox again where you have to navigate to the email you had open before switching.
Is there a tool similar to Backgrounder for Android?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Guys, I'm so much looking for a solution of this same thing. The closest I came to is Ram manager. Has a xda threat and can be found in the play store. But it also can't manage to lock an app and prevent its killing (although it helps a lot). I need my navigation always running and it is silently killed or stopped while I'm looking at my mail or have a phone call. This is ridiculous. Have you found a solution. Some way to protect an app from killing and lock it in the foreground. I mean how are they able to do it for the apps which are in the system tray!? Like antivirus apps and tons of other. I can't believe xda experts don't know how...

I would think that Antivirus apps run a service.
In Mioze's CM6 there are build prop edits that might work, but I never tried them.
Code:
# apps to be kept in memory (specified by process name)
# use with caution, RAM is limited!
sys.keep_app_1=
sys.keep_app_2=

I am not an expert and can't tell the difference between service and an app running. What you're saying makes sense, but I need clear instructions somewhere to make an app protected from killing. Thanks for helping.
Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

Wrong forms this milestone xt720.
Sent from my SGH-T759 using xda premium

I pretty much fixed android multitasking - even on ense 4.0 and 4.1
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1900626
Testers welcome.
And for locking an app in a foreground state, my SuperCharger can do that via BulletProof Apps menu.

zeppelinrox said:
I pretty much fixed android multitasking - even on ense 4.0 and 4.1
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1900626
wI
Testers welcome.
And for locking an app in a foreground state, my SuperCharger can do that via BulletProof Apps menu.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I tested that and almost became an expert. I'm not so sure if it is completely solved, although I have to admit that you have done a great and recognized job.
Just tell me can the script for bulletproof apps work alone, without the supercharger script. Many ROMs have their own memory settings and one is afraid to cover them with supercharger script settings.
But if bulletproof script can run and do the job on itsown then the problem is really fixed.

Yeah its separate.
Alot of devs say dont supercharge because they dont want to be showed up and scare their users lol
But hundreds of roms come supercharged anyway.

zeppelinrox said:
Yeah its separate.
Alot of devs say dont supercharge because they dont want to be showed up and scare their users lol
But hundreds of roms come supercharged anyway.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for answering!
So I'm going to try running only the bulletproof script without the supercharger script and set an app to be UNbillable.
Should I set it to run on startup!? I'm using custom ROM. The last revolution HD.

The init.d script would run automatically.
So you dont need to configure anything.
Whatever app is in the hitlist will get bulletptoofed soon after running the app.

zeppelinrox said:
The init.d script would run automatically.
So you dont need to configure anything.
Whatever app is in the hitlist will get bulletptoofed soon after running the app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am trying to get this configured. But I only want to run the bulletproof script, not the 99SuperCharger script. I just want to keep my rom's memory settings, cause I am OK with them.
But both of the scripts (99SuperCharger and bulletproof) are going to reside in the init.d folder of my custom rom. So they will both be started, aren't they?
How can I make only bulletproof script run at boot. Should I just delete 99SuperCharger from init.d?

[Q] Task Manager

So with the OTA ICS update, I noticed that the stock task manager that was on gingerbread has been removed. Does anyone know why that is, and is it recommended to use any of the market task managers? The reason I ask is sometimes I forget to close things like maps or navigation, and I usually set it up to kill the task once my screen locks to save battery.

A common misconception is that apps run in the background forever; this is not true. If an app is using too much memory (which links to battery life) it’ll be killed by your phone. That’s why if you play a game, check a message, and come back the game is still running. It’s memory usage isn’t that high. However if you put your phone down, walk away for an hour, and the game is still trying to run in the background, there’s a good chance it will be closed before you come back. Separate task managers have to constantly be running in the background which can actually use more battery than it saves. Yes, task managers can use more battery than claim to save.
Long press the home button. Swipe left or right to close out an application. Or, if you're really concerned about this, under Settings -> Developer options, there is a setting under the APPS category called Don't keep activities. It says that selecting it will "destroy every activity as soon as the user leaves it." Also, you can limit your background processes there as well.
Sent from my rooted Mayan Calendar

Just wanted to add, while the task manager has disappeared explicitly as an app, as Apex rightly pointed out ICS is more dynamic in it's task & app management since being a upgraded iteration of the Android OS. Also whilst the further useful tips what Apex has advised, bear in mind the swipe to end action will never show background processes & tasks, rather it shows only running main non system apps. Also since practically everyone makes use of a file manager like Astro you also have a task manager (which is an inbuilt function of the program) which you can make use of. Similarly Avast too has an inbuilt task manager. Also many apps have internal setting to disable feature of autostart while rebooting which you may want to look at. I kind of feel also a lot of apps have got work to do in terms of coming to speed with seamless ICS cohabitation until which point of time they misbehave at times.
A thing which I miss is, earlier when we used to hit the home button it would revert to the third home page out of the five and if pressed once again all the five home pages would float simultaneously but I believe this functionality has been discontinued now.

*RANT* bad Android memory management

Guys I have problem with Android smartphones. I am not the youngest anymore and remember the first PCs and first smartphones with 32x less memory then an average handheld device has today. I played with them all and know what they could do. The thing that still continues to surprise me till today on Android is WHY the heck can't an app stay in memory without being quit on the first occasion?? I really think that Android will never be usable for any serious work if things keep closing or reloading just after a few switches between apps!
Some examples: why can't I switch between Chrome browser and Onenote to type something without having that webpage be reloaded again using more data and sucking more battery power? I learned not to risk writing any bigger post into some forum lately because if I would have to switch to another tab to check some info or switch to another app the in progress text would most likely be lost because webpage would reload! Why is it so risky to switch out of some game to write a message or check calendar because it is very likely to be killed and my progress lost? The phones I used recently (Xiaomi Mi2s, Xperia Z3 compact, Xperia Z5 compact) have frikin 2GB of memory, so I wonder if nowadays apps are so much more memory demanding then before that this is simply still not sufficient. I just checked settings and some apps I just tested use few tens of MB, so it is still comparable to the times of Windows 98 or Windows mobile IMHO.
My first smartphone was windows mobile Samsung Omnia II with just around 90MB of usable memory and let me tell you that this problem was not happening on it! I could have several tabs with webpages (even non mobile versions) open and could safely switch on the camera, take pictures, write an sms and go back without having to worry that anything will be closed or reloaded! Why can't I open a camera app on Android and take a photo without having the previously open app be closed?
I can even compare today's android phones to one of my oldest pcs back in year 2000 or so. Imagine that it had just 64MB of RAM. I could have open many webpages in Internet Explorer (yeah it was far the best at that time , a few editors for web and text editing and I could even play some game and alt+tab back and forth without any problem! That was Windows 98 guys. Of course you will tell me that today's web pages for example are much bigger then in 2000. OK but what about mobile versions huh? I don't think they are that big so a phone with 2GB of RAM would choke.
I always thought that apps are supposed to be paused/frozen when I switch out of them but left in memory. Unfortunately it seems apps are being killed surprisingly often even when settings / memory shows hundreds of RAM free. The thing that is even more weird to me is that apps I had open just a few seconds ago are being closed upon switching to some other one and back, but the ones which I had active hours ago often stay in memory! That does not make much sense. Why doesn't android kill the longest not active apps first instead? OK, so do I have to buy OnePlus 3 or Meizu Pro 6 with 6GB of RAM to be able to keep simple 3 apps open without worrying that they will reload when switching out of them? As I showed this does not happen on much older devices with similar specs, so is this some fundamental flaw/feature of Android architecture or am I missing some simple explanation?
If you have experience with Windows Phones or iOS regarding this please share and compare.

So it seems everybody agrees
But I would really like to know some of your experience with other phones from the fruit company for example...

java
---------- Post added at 07:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:11 PM ----------
> Why doesn't android kill the longest not active apps first instead?
There is some heuristic going on that calculate the oom priority and modifies /proc/PID/oom_adj so. For example (foreground) services have lower oom_adj (less likely to be killed by oom-killer). Actually I ended up adding code to my app that overrides /proc/PID/oom_adj to a really low number to keep it running (but that requires root - I also dont understand why *the user* does not have a chance to say "hey android keep running this app in the background!")
> Unfortunately it seems apps are being killed surprisingly often even when settings / memory shows hundreds of RAM free
Yeah that "low memory value" (ie when to kick off the oom-killer) is also set somewhere in /proc (?) It's 200MB on my phone with 2 gigs ram IIRC. To test what's getting killed (and whenl, etc.) this app is superb: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tspoon.androidtoolbelt
it's all even more annoying because starting even basic apps (like dialer or contacts etc. etc.) takes even seconds(!) if they are not in memory already (on any phone!) ... oh, well, java

Thanks for a reply! Have anybody tried MIUI? There is an option to lock an application and supposedly prevent it from being killed when multitasking. Just swipe up in tasks view and it marks it with a lock. I have just read this article and it seems manufacturers set these LMK values. I have a feeling they are really high for Sony phones. Maybe if I root mine I would be able to change those. Unfortunately it seems without root I cannot even view these values. They show as 0 in /sys/module/lowmemorykiller/parameters/ and cannot be opened. I can't open those oom files either.

yeah, defo need root for this

Oh and it gets worse. Because of this behaviour many apps use a nasty trick of setting up an alarm (usually with wake lock) triggered every second to make sure they are running (if a process is not running and there is an alarm for that process set up, the process is started).
So what happens is that the OOM/low-memory killer kills the app it is started by android framework the next second ... and it might get killed by oom-kiler again ...
It's interesting to run "apktool d foobar.apk" and grep the smali for "AlarmManager.set" on apps that want to run in the background ...

CleanMaster app is good and it saved me from exhausted internal capacity issues many times (on Z3Compact) and it also shows apps which frequently restart. Is that because of what you just wrote? I remember it was Pinterest a lot for example.

and it also shows apps which frequently restart. Is that because of what you just wrote? I remember it was Pinterest a lot for example.
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sounds like it could be the case but you it's hard to tell for sure - you would have to have a look at logcat at least

I have logcat. What would you search for there?