Develop Bugs

"Don't keep activities" - anybody use it?

Love the phone but a few times the launcher has redrawn after exiting an app because of most likely memory issues. Anybody using this option? Assuming over time this would keep more memory free and reduce this issue. Any thoughts?
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mobilehavoc said:
Love the phone but a few times the launcher has redrawn after exiting an app because of most likely memory issues. Anybody using this option? Assuming over time this would keep more memory free and reduce this issue. Any thoughts?
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This is one of the reasons why I don't like that Google included these developer options pre-installed on this phone. They're developer options for a reason, we can install them if we need to.
This feature is designed so that developers can test their app to be sure that data is properly saved when is no longer in the foreground. For example, if a user receives a phone call or jumps to another app, the app needs to do what is necessary to save it's data. At times, Android can kill a process in the background. If the user plans to go back (perhaps they finished the phone call), they want to see what it is they were working on last. The developer is supposed to handle this case by rebuilding everything as it was before (to provide that seamless experience for the user when switching between apps).
This debug feature helps us test that it works.
For the average user, all you're really more likely to do is slow down your apps. As they will have to rebuild themselves when you resume them, and you may even open yourself to more quirky bugs (for those apps that didn't properly test the above scenario).
So please don't enable it unless you're doing it for development purposes. My 2 cents.
*EDIT* Here's a page from the Android Dev Guide justifying my explanation:
http://developer.android.com/guide/developing/debugging/debugging-devtools.html
Immediately destroy activities
Tells the system to destroy an activity as soon as it is stopped (as if Android had to reclaim memory). This is very useful for testing the onSaveInstanceState(Bundle) / onCreate(android.os.Bundle) code path, which would otherwise be difficult to force. Choosing this option will probably reveal a number of problems in your application due to not saving state. For more information about saving an activity's state, see the Activities document.
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(and yes, they used to call it "Immediately destroy activities")

Thanks. I turned it off. Did notice some bugs while on. I just wish with 1GB of RAM the launcher wouldnt have to reload. Hopefully things get better. Might just be my apps but it happens quite often when leaving the browser.
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mobilehavoc said:
Thanks. I turned it off. Did notice some bugs while on. I just wish with 1GB of RAM the launcher wouldnt have to reload. Hopefully things get better. Might just be my apps but it happens quite often when leaving the browser.
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weird.. how many widgets do you have on your launcher? the more widgets you have, the slower the launcher is.
Have you tried another launcher? The stock launcher has never been known for being fast and efficient, although I haven't had any issues with it (whereas I'm a LauncherPro fan on my other devices).

kwazi said:
weird.. how many widgets do you have on your launcher? the more widgets you have, the slower the launcher is.
Have you tried another launcher? The stock launcher has never been known for being fast and efficient, although I haven't had any issues with it (whereas I'm a LauncherPro fan on my other devices).
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I have quite a few Widgets but nothing too crazy I don't think. I use LauncherPro on my other devices as well but I love this new launcher so I'm going to stick it out. Like I said the most common task that causes the issue is when I'm using the web browser and then come out of it. Otherwise its been stable. I've noticed the same thing with Honeycomb on my Xoom so it might just be one of those things I have to put up with.
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i'm also noticing some redraw and occasional lag when hitting the home button.
I'm hoping that CM9's custom launcher will have an option to lock it in memory- that may increase the performance by a lot.
also when replacement launchers like go launcher start optimizing more for ICS those might be good options.

Have you tried converting your launcher into a system app? You'll need to use Titanium Backup Pro or something similar to do it for you, or simple copy the APK into your system/app folder... Really sped up my launcher!

shawnshine said:
Have you tried converting your launcher into a system app? You'll need to use Titanium Backup Pro or something similar to do it for you, or simple copy the APK into your system/app folder... Really sped up my launcher!
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Did you see the date on this thread, almost 8 months old
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95Z28 said:
Did you see the date on this thread, almost 8 months old
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... and yet people still continue to discover the thread and benefit from it.
Thanks for clarifying the meaning of "Don't keep activities"

my razr xt910 cannot be counted upon to run smoothly with all the apps simultaneously running and forcing itself to go into reboot. i then fancied an iPhone single styled system (as compared to Android multi-talks) cuz iPhone looks robust and responsive. all the killer that claimed to do the job looked more of a farce and then when i stumbled upon the destroy activity i was like OMG. srsly b4 using it I've only got just inner 100mb of ram, after using it i have a whooping 400mb ram. UI appears faster and all. regarding the relaunching of apps and battery life being used up. i think I'll start to worry about it on a later date. what say any body. ooh yes to add on, even after i deleted 40 apps on my phone it still hanged like fcuked. i guess i can reinstall them back again and not have to worry about it. btw i can't seem to root my xt910 for nuts so i can't custom ROM it along with all other fanciful mods that i hear about what others did to their phones.

How can I enable true multitasking in ICS?

I love my Galaxy Nexus, but what's driving me crazy is how it shuts down any app whenever I switch out of it, even if I use the -completely useless so far- multitasking soft key. So for instance I'm waiting for a YouTube video to load, so I temporarily switch out of it to do something else (this is a smartphone isn't it) and come back, and find it reopening the video as if I just did it. Same thing with the browsers. I have 2-3 tabs open, and decided to check out something on the homescreen. Big mistake. When I get back will have to wait for all the tabs to reload.
Anyway to keep apps running in the background?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App

I think YouTube just does that. It has been mentioned before. No problem with the browser.
My grandma beat me down and took my nexus. Sent from a jitterbug with beats by dre.

If your using a Verizon nexus, it partly has to do with Verizon's cdma network, not just android. Plus it would slow your phones operation down and you would see more force closes due to limited resources.
Edit— sorry everybody, did a little drunk forum trolling last night. Everything I posted was false. The other poster was correct and I deserve all the shame.
Transmitted from my Galaxy Tab 10.1 via Tapatalk

Most likely you have an app running thats killing processes. If you have any task manager/killer remove it immediately.
As far as youtube goes, youtube will NEVER keep a video paused or continue playing if you leave. It saves what you were on, but thats it. few reasons for that.
Now, my experience today and no issues.
Facebook, Browser (4 tabs), NFL'11, and twitter all running and they all saved what i was doing and none of them ever closed.
in fact, 3 hours after, the 4 tabs were still open. I've actually had tabs open for 3 days straight that i forgot to close and the browser just made new ones.
and these are not just text sites. I had the Battlefield 3 battlelog, nfl.com, battlefield wiki, and the verge mobile all on.

My browser will keep pages open for days if I wanted to...strange! You're using stock browser?
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stock browser is awesome. especially the inverted mode.

Pretty amateur thread. Come on
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Stardate Tab 10.1 said:
If your using a Verizon nexus, it partly has to do with Verizon's cdma network, not just android. Plus it would slow your phones operation down and you would see more force closes due to limited resources.
Transmitted from my Galaxy Tab 10.1 via Tapatalk
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I can't find one fact in your entire statement. What could CDMA possibly have to do with it? Also, you wouldn't see more 'force closes'. When Android runs low on RAM it selects the oldest cached app and ends it, unless it's active.

once again, amateur thread. **** needs to be closed down

TareX said:
I love my Galaxy Nexus, but what's driving me crazy is how it shuts down any app whenever I switch out of it, even if I use the -completely useless so far- multitasking soft key. So for instance I'm waiting for a YouTube video to load, so I temporarily switch out of it to do something else (this is a smartphone isn't it) and come back, and find it reopening the video as if I just did it. Same thing with the browsers. I have 2-3 tabs open, and decided to check out something on the homescreen. Big mistake. When I get back will have to wait for all the tabs to reload.
Anyway to keep apps running in the background?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using XDA App
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Do you have Don't keep activities checked in the development part of settings? Go to Settings>Developer Options, scroll all the way down, and look if you've enabled the option I've mentioned above
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I have this exact same problem, with the browser and even with games.
I have no task manager. I have watchdog which i believe doesnt kill any processes itself and i have juice defender; could that be whats causing this problem?

I keep hearing about this, am I seriously the only one that can swipe apps away from the recent apps and they actually close?
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ChongoDroid said:
I keep hearing about this, am I seriously the only one that can swipe apps away from the recent apps and they actually close?
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possibly you are...
because for me and more than 5 of my friends using the same phone, those swiping aways only close the shortcut regardless of the app running in background or not.

DO THE FOLLOWING
1) go to settings, apps, running apps.
2) with that open, hit the multitask button that shows all apps running.
3) swipe away
4) watch it get killed off your running apps list.
5) grow up

Im not sure what all the *****iness is about but the problen I and i believe the OP were having was quite real and serious.
Any time you switched out of an app or game, even if only for a second, when you switched back it would restart the app or game and in the case of the browser reload the webpage.
Now, ive uninstalled watchdog and the problem seems to have gone away.
Is anybody else using watchdog having this problem?

People need to understand that devs put this code INTO THEIR APPS. Killswitches are hard coded into apps to let the system kill them if they have been in the background. A good example is Opera Mobile. It has a low priority that is coded in BY THE DEV.

schizophrenia said:
possibly you are...
because for me and more than 5 of my friends using the same phone, those swiping aways only close the shortcut regardless of the app running in background or not.
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Not possibly, I know I am. Home key keeps it running, back key caches/closes it. Certain apps perform differently as foreground tasks and some as background tasks. I think some can't be multi tasked like big games and stuff but as previously said that's on the dev side not androids.
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Background app updates

I've noticed that when Play is updating apps in the background, everything on my phone instantly becomes super sluggish. I don't remember this always being the case on the GNex, and even on my old Nexus One it just tended to allocate priority to the foreground app and finish the updates whenever it was convenient.
Is it just me or have app updates suddenly become more CPU intensive?
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Ive always experienced this
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I don't let any of my apps update automatically. There have been times when I have had a dozen updates available at the same time. I look at what is available and decide when I want to update at my convenience.

I'm referring to when I have a bunch of updates and I go click the update all button. I don't do auto updates either.
But for whatever reason, when I switch to another app it can't seem to give enough priority to the foreground for me to do even simple tasks in other apps. If I open the browser and try to type in a URL during app updates, it force quits.
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This sounds like normal behavior to me. When updating multiple apps, the play store is installing & downloading apps simultaneously. This uses CPU time & causes I/O load on your internal memory. Of course the device will feel more sluggish when busy with such tasks.

Petrovski80 said:
This sounds like normal behavior to me. When updating multiple apps, the play store is installing & downloading apps simultaneously. This uses CPU time & causes I/O load on your internal memory. Of course the device will feel more sluggish when busy with such tasks.
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This is a pretty damn powerful processor. Why in the world should downloading and replacing a few files bring it to a grinding halt? I I have been using Android for almost three years now and I truly think this behaviour has gotten worse since the days of the Nexus One.
Could it maybe be related to the new incremental updates feature? That would certainly increase the processing load involved in downloading and installing.
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patruns said:
I don't let any of my apps update automatically. There have been times when I have had a dozen updates available at the same time. I look at what is available and decide when I want to update at my convenience.
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Thats the best way
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Close all?

What's a good app or way to close all apps at once?
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mario24601 said:
What's a good app or way to close all apps at once?
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Press the Home button.

irishtexmex said:
Press the Home button.
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lol apps dont close when you press the home button smart one. and op if you click the multi-window button(the one on the right of home button) you can swipe them all away really fast but dont really know about all at once

FaDeGFX said:
lol apps dont close when you press the home button smart one. and op if you click the multi-window button(the one on the right of home button) you can swipe them all away really fast but dont really know about all at once
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Yes was hoping for an all close at once type app. Had that on iPhone thought might have something similar.
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There are 3rd party app killers in the play store. Check there...
There was a stock task manager...but I guess Google removed it for JB
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App killer

Cyanogenmod 10.1 has a button on the multitasking menu to do that. But it's kinda pointless except to clear the list of recently used apps. Android, if my understanding is correct, automatically fills the memory with tasks so killing apps is worse than pointless since you're just causing the system to prioritize unused background processes over the ones that you use more often.
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irishtexmex said:
Press the Home button.
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Click to collapse
You should listen to this guy. I know you're coming from a different OS, so you aren't aware of how Android deals with memory. The system is very good at multitasking. Apps that have been idling in the background will be pushed out and won't consume resources or ramp up your CPU. By killing those apps, you force the system to have to reload and process resources necessary to start the app. Android will keep enough of the resources to quickly fire up the app, but restrict activity so that your battery is pretty much unaffected.
An analogy if you need it: Android will bookmark and close whatever you were reading. That way, you can move the book around or leave it on the shelf and quickly pick it up and continue from the last page you were on. You are requesting that the system instead just closes the book, and buries it in a box with other books, and which is located in the attic. It takes more resources to find the book and locate the page again. Just let Android do its thing. Any popular dev will tell you the same thing.
TL;DNR - Don't use a task killer, you will get far better battery life and performance if you let the system deal with system resources.
FaDeGFX said:
lol apps dont close when you press the home button smart one. and op if you click the multi-window button(the one on the right of home button) you can swipe them all away really fast but dont really know about all at once
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Don't listen to this guy. He used the phrase "smart one," which I haven't heard since I was in elementary school (and I thought it was un-clever and uselessly sarcastic then). He also thinks that swiping away apps from the recents menu kills them. This is not how Android works. AOKP devs will not implement a recents menu that actually does let you swipe to kill apps because it's a useless feature that does more harm than good (zero benefit, actually). Just trust that your system knows how to handle its resources.
TL;DNR - Swiping away apps from the recents menu doesn't kill them. Stop trying to kill apps; only do so if they're unresponsive.

If u really want it, aokp has this feature
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reboot?

Hung0702 said:
You should listen to this guy. I know you're coming from a different OS, so you aren't aware of how Android deals with memory. The system is very good at multitasking. Apps that have been idling in the background will be pushed out and won't consume resources or ramp up your CPU. By killing those apps, you force the system to have to reload and process resources necessary to start the app. Android will keep enough of the resources to quickly fire up the app, but restrict activity so that your battery is pretty much unaffected.
An analogy if you need it: Android will bookmark and close whatever you were reading. That way, you can move the book around or leave it on the shelf and quickly pick it up and continue from the last page you were on. You are requesting that the system instead just closes the book, and buries it in a box with other books, and which is located in the attic. It takes more resources to find the book and locate the page again. Just let Android do its thing. Any popular dev will tell you the same thing.
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Let's say I start loading a web page and quickly jump to another app before it's loaded, then when I return to Chrome the page is ready and waiting. Doesn't this imply that apps are not just simply bookmarked and closed, but may remain active in the background? I am asking, not saying btw.

1234568 said:
Let's say I start loading a web page and quickly jump to another app before it's loaded, then when I return to Chrome the page is ready and waiting. Doesn't this imply that apps are not just simply bookmarked and closed, but may remain active in the background? I am asking, not saying btw.
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Foreground apps are told that they are no longer in view, but are allowed to keep running if they wish. The OS will stop them if the memory is needed - which with 2GB is not very often on the nexus 4!

So Hung0702 was wrong on the last page when he said:
Apps that have been idling in the background will be pushed out and won't consume resources or ramp up your CPU
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It seems as though background apps can use resources and may have a negative impact on battery. Now I have got to the bottom of this I also want a clear all button!

1234568 said:
So Hung0702 was wrong on the last page when he said:
It seems as though background apps can use resources and may have a negative impact on battery. Now I have got to the bottom of this I also want a clear all button!
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Click to collapse
Yes, they can keep using resources in the background. However, they will usually not keep the cpu awake unless they have an actual background service, so they will not stop the device from sleeping. As far as I know this is not enforced, but most apps will release the wakelock when told to pause by the OS (because the app is now hidden). This means they shouldn't have much impact on battery life.
You can see what is currently running by going to Settings -> Apps and select the Running tab. The recent apps list is not the same - most will have actually closed when you hid them.

Galaxy S3 lags

So I don't remember the last time an S3 was this slow but I'm feeling I don't even wanna use it anymore because if it. I'm running stock 4.3 TW UI and it lags quite a bit. Scrolling through me u opening etc. I've used the AT&T version and it runs flawlessly while my T-Mobile S3 lags like crazy even on simple games like Clash of Clans. I've factory reset before and would like to continue using the phone so any help would be great
-Thanks
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But have you factory reset recently? I know im always sating to do this to everyone but its the best way to know if its an app or corrupt data or is it more likely to be hardware. Id odin flash the firmware and factory reset. If its still having issues when running clean it is very possibly a hw problem. Maybe the battery is just getting old and weak and cant provided enough "push"....
Or if youve got old data you keep restoring, it might be having issues trying to read from it.
If you dont want to do all that then at least check show processes in dev options, check whats using the most battery and maybe try the logcat and event logger apps to see whats running.
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I know it sounds silly, but just check to see how many browser tabs are open in any web browsers you have installed. When there are more than three tabs open in chrome, my phone gets noticeably slower in the UI. I don't play clash of clans, but I have both Dead Triggers and for I while I was playing whatever the latest Modern Combat was. It's surprising to me how capable the SIII GPU is.

Flash new rom. You will love it then
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