Develop Bugs

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?
Sent from my NookColor using XDA Premium App

stock browser is awesome. especially the inverted mode.

Pretty amateur thread. Come on
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

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?
Sent from my Google phone

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?
Sent from my Google phone
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

Apps closes when re-opened

Sorry for the vague title.
When apps that require additional data (GTA III, Spectral Souls, ect) are downloading, I find that I need to keep them running in the foreground.
If I open GTA III, let it start downloading data, switch to home and do other stuff, then switch back, the app immediately closes and I have to resume the download by relaunching the app.
I am not familiar with downloading data for apps so I am not sure if this is expected behavior or if there is some issue with my tablet.
Thank you in advance.

I have experienced the same issue.
Also even when I play a game and go to the home page to look at something and try and get back after a few minutes the game restarts.
Its as if multitasking does not work or the applications are being killed.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium

One of new features in jelly-bean is closing non used apps automatically instead of keeping them in ram
like android does normally, to controll dfault system behaviour in this case go to setting/developer options/keep activities, this may be causing problems, from developer point of view every app should be killed when user quits is., and android activity life cycle was sometimes real pain in the ass, especially in case of porting apps from other platforms.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda app-developers app

Thank you for the response. But this is not true multi tasking then. And what is the default standard limit mean? Thank you.
Sent from my Nexus 7 using xda premium

i think in the setting u can delay this?? not sure where but im sure i saw something like that...

Killing apps..

I found some articles on net talking about harmful influences when using task killers apps.
I'm using SlimICS at the moment and I want to know if when I use the killing button that I've added on my navigation buttons harms my phone as the task killers do..
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus while relaxing..

Don't kill apps unless you have a misbehaving one that's adversely affecting your phone.
The OS can manage apps and memory so much better than you ever could.

martonikaj said:
Don't kill apps unless you have a misbehaving one that's adversely affecting your phone.
The OS can manage apps and memory so much better than you ever could.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just to add: If you have a misbehaving app, don't bother killing it. Just uninstall it. It's not worth the trouble.

These task killers and memory optimizers are really good for lower end devices that have little memory. I used them on a phone that only had 356MB of RAM and only run at about 30-40MB free. A better way to address these issues is to run the V6 Supercharger script on a rooted device.
As for the GNex, why do you need to run task killers? You're not having memory performance issues, are you?

netbuzz said:
These task killers and memory optimizers are really good for lower end devices that have little memory. I used them on a phone that only had 356MB of RAM and only run at about 30-40MB free. A better way to address these issues is to run the V6 Supercharger script on a rooted device.
As for the GNex, why do you need to run task killers? You're not having memory performance issues, are you?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep. On my old ZTE Blade I really did feel a significant difference in smoothness after killing off some apps, so I don't entirely agree with the notion that you should never ever even consider doing it (which seems to be what some people advocate), but on the GNex there doesn't seem to be a need for it unless a specific app is misbehaving. I don't know if that's just because of the more powerful hardware or if it's also because of the much improved OS (I imagine it's both), but there you go.

JaiaV said:
Just to add: If you have a misbehaving app, don't bother killing it. Just uninstall it. It's not worth the trouble.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This. I use watchdog to monitor rogue apps. Engadget was s repeat offender so it had to go.
As mentioned the OS does a great job on its own.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

You need nothing more than to swipe apps away when you're done with them in the multitasking window, which doubles as a task manager of sorts.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

MikeyMike01 said:
You need nothing more than to swipe apps away when you're done with them in the multitasking window, which doubles as a task manager of sorts.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Again, why even bother? The OS handles this just fine.

Although, that doesn't necessarily "kill" background apps. There is a box in "developer settings" that, if you check it, will kill any application after using it. I haven't tried it out but it may just work.
Sent from my GummyNex!

LocoTSX said:
Although, that doesn't necessarily "kill" background apps. There is a box in "developer settings" that, if you check it, will kill any application after using it. I haven't tried it out but it may just work.
Sent from my GummyNex!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm pretty sure that's as bad as using a task killer.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Ntavelis said:
I found some articles on net talking about harmful influences when using task killers apps.
I'm using SlimICS at the moment and I want to know if when I use the killing button that I've added on my navigation buttons harms my phone as the task killers do..
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus while relaxing..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
even cyanogenmod has a kill app button, i dont think it does anything to your phone.

IMO the only useful reasons to kill a background app are if it's wasting your battery, bandwidth, or it's some kind of logger. In those cases you're better off just uninstalling it. Android is designed to keep things in memory to save start-up time and related battery drain, and so you have the benefit of the task-selector button. It knows when to clear enough memory to keep your foreground app and you happy. Task killers are holdovers from the days when they were useful.
galaxy nexus (gsm) / cm9 / trinity @ 1.4GHz

I learned a long time ago that in Android/Linux free RAM is wasted RAM.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

Ics/jb does not need app killers if you press the recent app key and swype it left or right the app gets killed
Sent from my GT-N7000 using xda premium

martonikaj said:
Again, why even bother? The OS handles this just fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, not really. And if it were "bad" they wouldn't put it into Android. You should swipe them away when you're done with them.
I Am Marino said:
I'm pretty sure that's as bad as using a task killer.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's nothing bad about closing apps you're done with.
What's bad is the auto task killers.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

MikeyMike01 said:
No, not really. And if it were "bad" they wouldn't put it into Android. You should swipe them away when you're done with them.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No it really does nothing positive to swipe apps away when you're done with them. As the poster a couple above me said, free RAM is wasted RAM. The OS will keep everything in order. You're unnecessarily micromanaging your apps when you swipe them away. Your phone just works harder and for longer re-opening apps over and over again when you kill them manually.
Your RAM is powered and draining battery whether its full of apps or not. It's in your best interest to let the OS fill up your RAM (all the way up to about 90% full) and let it kill things as necessary when you load an app that needs more than is available. The OS will handle it. I know everyone has it engrained in their minds from using Windows for so long to keep as much RAM free as possible, but its just not the case in Android anymore.

martonikaj said:
No it really does nothing positive to swipe apps away when you're done with them. As the poster a couple above me said, free RAM is wasted RAM. The OS will keep everything in order. You're unnecessarily micromanaging your apps when you swipe them away. Your phone just works harder and for longer re-opening apps over and over again when you kill them manually.
Your RAM is powered and draining battery whether its full of apps or not. It's in your best interest to let the OS fill up your RAM (all the way up to about 90% full) and let it kill things as necessary when you load an app that needs more than is available. The OS will handle it. I know everyone has it engrained in their minds from using Windows for so long to keep as much RAM free as possible, but its just not the case in Android anymore.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whatever you want to believe. I'm not going to waste my time on convincing you.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus

MikeyMike01 said:
Whatever you want to believe. I'm not going to waste my time on convincing you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hah alright.

Does Jellybean disable multitasking?

I came from the t-mobile galaxy s2 and it ran all my tasks in the background. For example, I'd load up a page and then check my email and I'd come back to see it fully loaded.
Whereas, on my Galaxy Nexus if I try to do that it'll have to reload the page.
I know this was a problem on the HTC one X and S, but has this always been something going on in the Nexus or was it after the update to jellybean?
Is there a way to enable apps running in the background?
Thank you in advanced.

jlim0512 said:
I came from the t-mobile galaxy s2 and it ran all my tasks in the background. For example, I'd load up a page and then check my email and I'd come back to see it fully loaded.
Whereas, on my Galaxy Nexus if I try to do that it'll have to reload the page.
I know this was a problem on the HTC one X and S, but has this always been something going on in the Nexus or was it after the update to jellybean?
Is there a way to enable apps running in the background?
Thank you in advanced.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine does it fine Idk what's going on with yours :3 i multitask all the time
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

you prolly got too many stuff running in the background at all time thats eating up your RAM
cant blame you seems like a gig of RAM isnt enough anymore

I'll agree with the others. Mine usually works the way you have described but sometimes it doesn't, especially with Chrome. If you wait too long the OS will also kill the app no matter if there's enough free ram or not iirc. I'd think if you just switched to email or sms or the alike, then switched back to the browser within a couple of minutes it should work just fine. 2gb of ram would definitely help though!

Do you have the setting to kill apps after exiting enabled in Developers Settings?
Turn that off if it's on.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

I Am Marino said:
Do you have the setting to kill apps after exiting enabled in Developers Settings?
Turn that off if it's on.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No I don't and I have the "background process limit" to standard limit. What is the standard limit?

I have to agree with the OP. On my SGS2 i9100, apps stay alive much longer in the background buttons on the GNex they have to reload even if it's the 3rd apply on hold.
But then again the I9100 had 835mb free ram and the GNex only has 695mb free ram.
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Where's all of our ram being allocated to? GPU? It was like that on my Droid X2, was so annoying that the original Droid X had more free ram than it did
Toroplus

What I find surprising is that any somewhat-experienced developer can tell you that RAM is so important on Android, much more than processing power, yet phones are released QUAD-CORE, which makes no sense. Android is a semi-multitasking operating system, it would benefit more from a really good dual-core rather than an average quad-core processor.
RAM is important, because when you switch applications on Android, your app's are 'hybernated' in memory until they are called back again. It is also possible for developer to hybernate the application better (such as store the state on internal memory), but most applications do not use it.
What this means is that if you have a lot of applications running and some applications 'ping' in your background frequently, then you will have very little RAM available on your phone. So when new application is run, the old hybernated ones are killed off.
Where does this take us?
It takes us back to 2010 when released phones had very little internal memory. Applications were growing in size and functionality back then, but most could not be moved to SD card and some parts of the application stayed on internal memory anyway. This meant that after a while, you really could not install all the apps you found useful because you kept running out of internal memory.
This is similar to 2012, where most phones have just 1GB of RAM and only very few new phones have realized this as a problem and have upgraded to 2GB. It is similar because again, apps grow in size and functionality and require more RAM. And in time this means that you can only have very few applications running at the same time without being killed off. Right now, if you happen to run a game like Shadowgun, be prepared to have most of your background apps killed off the moment you start the game.
On the 1GB version of Galaxy S3 that was released in EU there are even problems where the launcher itself is killed off because applications require RAM.
So it's similar in that in a years time, 1GB of RAM will be a real nuisance on the phone because it almost entirely kills off multitasking capability of the phone.
Developers know it, yet marketers and people who 'make the decisions' do not seem to care. They can advertise better processor much more efficiently than more RAM, since people can notice speed, but rarely notice RAM. Most people don't even know that their phone could work better if it had more RAM.

Jesus, I hope you didn't type all that from a phone!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

Yeah I observe what OP is encountering..
On my SGS2, app tends to stay alive in background than nexus.... not sure why. probably because of HD display.?
IMO, I've played with my friends' iphone, iphone does it somewhat better, frozen app resume very quick..

nonione said:
you prolly got too many stuff running in the background at all time thats eating up your RAM
cant blame you seems like a gig of RAM isnt enough anymore
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't have a gig of ram, you have less
Sent from my Jelly Beaned GNexus

I have found that on all my phones, the stock browser and dolphin browser will get killed and force me to reload. But the chrome browser doesn't appear to do this.

Jubomime said:
Jesus, I hope you didn't type all that from a phone!
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Made me LOL
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

What I've found is that, on JB, clicking back on an app until you get out will bring you to the home screen instead of the application you were using before opening the last one.
Pretty annoying if you ask me! Anyone knows how to change this behavior?
The stock browser behavior is not changed much from ics, though. It often reloads, but I'm not sure it's been killed, it might just be that the page is "expired" in some way.

elban said:
What I've found is that, on JB, clicking back on an app until you get out will bring you to the home screen instead of the application you were using before opening the last one.
Pretty annoying if you ask me! Anyone knows how to change this behavior?
The stock browser behavior is not changed much from ics, though. It often reloads, but I'm not sure it's been killed, it might just be that the page is "expired" in some way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's what "recents" is for. Why would you press the back button ten times, even if that worked?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium

Jubomime said:
That's what "recents" is for. Why would you press the back button ten times, even if that worked?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The application state wil be different if you change app by history or by hitting back.
I often leave an app by hitting back because I want it to start from the main screen (not where it was) when I get to it (eventually) later.
It's like iconifying a window on a pc and it shows the desktop instead of the underlying window(s): doesn't make sense to me.
And anyway it's been different on all previous android versions (tested from cupcake on )

[Q] Anyone else notice some lag after the first few days? need help if you have!

So i've only had the phone for a few days and started noticing lag mainly in the settings yesterday.
It was buttery smooth the first few days until yesterday. I'll try to create a clear description of what is happening.
Everything in terms of hitting applications, sliding/switching pages, and browsers seems smooth but I'm getting doubts since settings have started lagging. So as of now, the settings menu is where I really notice the problem. What happens is I would press any of the choices such as display, sound, storage, etc and it would light up blue as a sign that I pressed it. Basically, the blue lighting stutters/lags as it turns into a deeper color and fades away proving that there is some lag. That itself is very irritating on such a powerful phone. The page also lags a bit as it's opening so it's obvious that it does lag. I don't understand why something as simple as settings might be causing this?
have any of you guys noticed this? I tried clearing ram, restarting phone, messing with dev options by changing animation and something else to .5x while enabling "force GPU rendering." I'm running stock touchwiz on baseband T889UVALJ1 if that helps. Keep in mind i'm not really tech savvy so try to suggest things in an easy to understand way please.
Any help is greatly appreciated and I hope you guys can help me fix my problem!

Been using it for the past 1 month plus and I do not have any lagging issues. I am on stock rom as well.

No lag either, been using the Note 2 for 2 months now. Check your apps with BetterBatteryStatts (too many backgroundservices runing).

No lag either. Did u install some crappy apps that run backstage
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda app-developers app

Thanks for the replies so far and before I spend some money on apps or what not, is there any way I can post a 5 second animation of what is happening? Kind of like a 5 second gif of my screen? A mix of a screenshot and video so like a screen vid? Are there are any apps that can do that(preferably free). I'll try to find an app that can do that in the meantime and will edit if I find something useful.
Edit: No idea what this is or how it ended up on my phone but could this be the culprit? https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tgrape.android.radar
People say it's bloatware and s-suggest from samsung but i'm not sure why it would be shown as an app on the play store website

I have noticed the phone can lag a bit if you have a heavy live wallpaper running.
Just sharing my thoughts on this

did you modify anything? no lags on my N2.

normally i'd say if you leave your phone on for a few days in a row, clear the memory every once in a while (press and hold home, go task manager, ram tab, clear memory) or reboot it, just so you dont have anything residual in your ram.
when android sees that you have 2gb of ram, it doesnt auto kill as many apps as it would if you were to have only 1gb of ram (my note 1 autokilled sooooooo frequently that it was annoying), so your ram ends up getting filled with some apps that you only used once in a while.

SquirtingCherry said:
I have noticed the phone can lag a bit if you have a heavy live wallpaper running.
Just sharing my thoughts on this
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I did have a live news wallpaper before but I disabled it and switched to one of the stock wallpapers and the problem persists..
parrotlarch said:
did you modify anything? no lags on my N2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No I didn't modify anything, were you referring to anything specific or some kind of setting?
Souai said:
normally i'd say if you leave your phone on for a few days in a row, clear the memory every once in a while (press and hold home, go task manager, ram tab, clear memory) or reboot it, just so you dont have anything residual in your ram.
when android sees that you have 2gb of ram, it doesnt auto kill as many apps as it would if you were to have only 1gb of ram (my note 1 autokilled sooooooo frequently that it was annoying), so your ram ends up getting filled with some apps that you only used once in a while.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I wrote that I tried clearing ram and restarting phone but it didn't help. Thanks for trying though

Yeah, I get a bit of lag here and there, specially if I haven't cleared running/background apps in a while.
I just do it from the task manager, and also check out what apps are using the most battery, and possibly therefore are some of the likely culprits.
I actually use this app called Carat, which is an "Energy bug detector app" (whatever that means), but it helps identify apps that are draining the battery, and incidentally, partially contributing to the lag.
Also obvious thing like live wallpapers or touchwiz in general (including all the 'special' Samsung features like smart rotate, smart stay, smart motion) probably add to it to. Nova launcher and a static wallpaper might help.

I'll try to post a video sometime soon showing the lag. It's not serious lag, but it does stutter and lag a decent amount compared to my first few days which is what sucks.

mitchillen said:
I'll try to post a video sometime soon showing the lag. It's not serious lag, but it does stutter and lag a decent amount compared to my first few days which is what sucks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Make sure that power saving is turned totally off in settings to avoid UI lag.

ItzMar said:
Make sure that power saving is turned totally off in settings to avoid UI lag.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah that was one of the first things I tried, didn't help.

This happen to me..If surf net lag this could help..check your network setting.
if your SIM card is 3G,set it to "GSM/WCDMA AUTO MODE" instead of LTE..
Hope it help

william1974 said:
This happen to me..If surf net lag this could help..check your network setting.
if your SIM card is 3G,set it to "GSM/WCDMA AUTO MODE" instead of LTE..
Hope it help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well I have a T-mobile Galaxy note II. It should be the 4g LTE variant but lte is not available yet. I think it is the n7105
Under the settings, I only have gsm/wcdma, gsm only, and wcdma only.
I'm not sure what I have to do

Anybody experience lagging on the xda app. Im getting some stuttering when scrolling. Mine's running on full stock rom even when I clear the memory...
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda app-developers app

DroidPH said:
Anybody experience lagging on the xda app. Im getting some stuttering when scrolling. Mine's running on full stock rom even when I clear the memory...
Sent from my GT-N7100 using xda app-developers app
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You can try enabling Force GPU rendering in developers options. That usually helps with that, or at least it seemed to in my case. Report back if it actually helped

quick update:
I found a vid and my lag basically looks like this http://youtu.be/0qyijcTeHcU?t=2m27s
Look at when he clicks on display, there is clearly some lag even if it is half a second - 1 second. I'm almost certain that my lag is even worse than that, but not by too much. It's just a pain in the ass after the first few days. Would flashing a custom rom like jedi X 7.2 help out with this since it's running a bravia engine?

MohJee said:
You can try enabling Force GPU rendering in developers options. That usually helps with that, or at least it seemed to in my case. Report back if it actually helped
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Actually it did :good: Unfortunately I've lost 10% battery within minutes of using the XDA App. Unticked...I clicked thanks for your help mate.