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?
Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using xda premium
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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.

galaxy nexus recent menu you button help!!

On my galaxy nexus when I hit the recent button I know when I swipe that it removes the application from the list but does it end it or just get rid of it from the recent menu
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General mixed opinions, but if your worried about RAM, don't be. Android natively handles it better then you can possibly attempt to.
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killyouridols said:
General mixed opinions, but if your worried about RAM, don't be. Android natively handles it better then you can possibly attempt to.
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Bingo.

mkeller96 said:
On my galaxy nexus when I hit the recent button I know when I swipe that it removes the application from the list but does it end it or just get rid of it from the recent menu
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The recent list has absolutely no bearing one way or the other on whether an app is running in the background or not. They are two completely separate and distinct things.
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najaboy said:
The recent list has absolutely no bearing one way or the other on whether an app is running in the background or not. They are two completely separate and distinct things.
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Wrong. Try this, open xda app/hit home/now go to manage apps/running tab/at bottom hit "show cached processes"/and you'll see the xda app in that list/now hit recent button and swipe xda away/hit back/and watch xda disappear from the cached process list.
good day.

chopper the dog said:
Wrong. Try this, open xda app/hit home/now go to manage apps/running tab/at bottom hit "show cached processes"/and you'll see the xda app in that list/now hit recent button and swipe xda away/hit back/and watch xda disappear from the cached process list.
good day.
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Apples and oranges. Cached processes and running background processes are two different things. A cached process is one that is not running, using no CPU or data.
To correctly check whether or not the two are tied merely entails force closing an app and then checking if it is gone from the recents list.
I did attempt to duplicate your observation, but there was no overlap between my recent apps and cached processes.
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You know what I don't like? How androids 'Running Apps' screen always says Its using up a bunch of memory but fails to show you all the apps which only total up to about half.

When you swipe an app away, it kills it unless it has a reason to keep it open.
For example, swipe the browser away and it kills it. The last page will have to reload from scratch on launch.
Log in to IMO, then swipe it away and it keeps running. When you re-enter IMO it's exactly where it left off.
At least, that's my perception. Swiping it away tells Android OS that you don't need the app anymore, but it's ultimately up to the app/OS to decide whether or not it will be killed.

najaboy said:
Apples and oranges. Cached processes and running background processes are two different things. A cached process is one that is not running, using no CPU or data.
To correctly check whether or not the two are tied merely entails force closing an app and then checking if it is gone from the recents list.
I did attempt to duplicate your observation, but there was no overlap between my recent apps and cached processes.
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Not true at all.
"What specifically happens when you swipe away a recent task is it: (1) kills any background or empty processes of the application (see http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals/processes-and-threads.html#Lifecycle for what this means), and (2) uses the new http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Service.html#onTaskRemoved(android.content.Intent) API to tell any services of the application about the task being removed so it can do whatever it thinks is appropriate.
There are really two major classes of things that run in the background: old processes of previously foreground apps (to speed up task switching), and processes that actively need to run indefinitely because of a service.
The first, background processes, are straight-forward -- they can be kept around, but the system can freely kill them whenever desired to free memory, and doing this basically has no impact on the user experience.
Where things get interesting is with services, which are basically how an application says "hey I need to be kept running in the background to do something." This may be to play some music, to fetch new e-mail, to perform navigation, to download a file, to update an app widget, and on and on. On devices that are tight on memory, it is these application services running that can cause memory pressure that is visible to the user."
https://plus.google.com/105051985738280261832/posts/GfwRYCC42uX

Google currents: recent performance issues

I really like google currents and have been using it more than pulse since getting my nexus 7. But just the last few days the performance has been horrible. Sometimes I get the forced close option, even though I select wait as it hasn't actually crashed, just maxing out the cpu for a bit.
Syncing takes a really long time now and when done, most of the articles don't have a screen shot even though I have the option to get images for all articles which has always worked previously. I don't know if I have added one too many news sources? I was going to clear the app cache but I'm concerned if that clears all my selected sources as well? I'm wondering if the sources are stored in the cloud and only the articles are cached.
Not sure what else to try but something is hurting the performance of this app lately.
Btw, previously I have a nook color and I have lots of articles starred in pulse. It's just running cm7 off a sdcard so I never installed titanium backups or anything. Is there a manual way I could take all t he cached stuff for pulse from my nook to the nexus 7?

I can't comment on your problems with Google Currents as I don't use it.
For Pulse, if you create a Pulse.me account, you can restore your selected subscriptions and starred article to your other phones or tablets.
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I use Currents also. I find it Sync's in about 5 seconds. You can clear cache, it only clears what has synced. Don't "clear data", that's all your preferences. I get all the photos and is acting no different than when I first started using it. I only have 20 links.

If you're getting below 4g free storage, you might be running into the issues described in this thread:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1776538

Not sure how helpful this may be but I was also having problems with Currents taking a long time to load. I realized that I started experiencing the issue when I had switched my offline reading settings to include all images in all editions. As soon as I changed it to only include it in the first 10 editions I noticed an improvement. Perhaps it may be worth taking a look.
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Thanks everyone for the suggestions. I'm going to try them shortly and report back. I noticed I'm getting a little more lag than usual in chrome so maybe it's not just currents but instead I've entered the dreaded lag zone as described in that other thread. But 4gigs? I thought I read there it was 2. Even 2 is ridiculous for a swap file or whatever it needs. But if it's 4 gigs, we lose a few gigs to the OS of the 16 and then we have to keep 4 gigs free for good performance?! And yes I'm below that, I'm a tad below 2 gigs now. Bought nova 3 and MC3 recently which put me below. And I notice both of them have a startup thing running. Or so Autorun manager tells me. That and a few other apps that I think have no business running on startup. Something like pulse (the purpose being to cache articles in the background) I can understand, but Nova 3? Why?
And what irks me more is not having an elegant way of stopping this. I know the android way is the OS should manage apps/memory and not the user and I get that, however I should still have a way of preventing these apps from launching. From what I've read no app really stops them from launching but rather kills them after launch. Or ones that do you need to be rooted.
I do have that option selected to cache all images and not just first 10 editions. What does first 10 editions mean exactly? the first 10 sites I've added? Or the first 10 stories within each? If the former, there's no way I can see of controlling what would be the first 10.
Even though I really like the layout of currents, maybe I'll switch back to pulse just for the simple fact of being able to retain an article.
I hope it's just a currents issue and I don't actually need to retain 4 gigs free.
If these things fail I'm going to uninstall Nova3/MC3 and see.

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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[Q] force a process to keep running?

Running jbsourcery v5 (4.2.2). I can't get any process to stay running at all. Lmt dies on me and restarts after browsing the web for a bit, after that it seems to die and restart every 5 mins. I downloaded sidebar today and its the same story but worse. The memory doesn't even need to be loaded, just lightly using my phone it dies and doesn't come back until I start it manually, this happens about every 5 mins and is EXTREMELY annoying. I've tweaked every single memory setting back and forth and also tried converting both to system apps but they force close and don't work.is there any way to force android to keep a process running or keep this from happening?
Edit: I should mention this has never happened with the weather bug status bar temperature. It sucks because both those apps are completely useless if they don't stay running

for anyone else with the same problem whether its a different app or not, i think i found the answer
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1012330
i just copied another file in my init.d, renamed it and added the info for the app and restarted. i checked it with rom toolbox and it shows the OOM group as being excluded... vs foreground, visibile, empty app, etc. time will tell but i think this is going to work and i can think of another 2 or 3 times this would have been amazing to know. in any event, hopefully someone else may find this useful.
noobish disclaimer: it would be HIGHLY advised not to do this with any apps that have a large memory footprint

aaaanddd. it still doesnt work, app already disappeared. would this be classified as a legitimate memory leak?

App pimp my rom has a lock app in memory setting. Tried it yet?
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namtombout said:
App pimp my rom has a lock app in memory setting. Tried it yet?
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lol i was just about to mention that. i wasnt finding anything about it at first because i was googling locking processes in memory. once i changed processes to applications, i found a thread mentioning it, and so far, it looks like this might have finally solved it. i havent had sidebar close yet so its looking pretty good.