Does multitasking work correctly?

[shadowhawk2020]

If her Sudoku app "loses" her current game every time it closes, then it's not written properly. The Android framework has specific events and handlers designed to inform an app not only when it's going to "sleep", but also when it's about to be unloaded from memory. They even provide some simple objects for saving game state to disk so that it can be reloaded when the app re-opens. The problem you describe could happen on any phone, if there's enough things being done at once.

I play Sudoku as well, and the app I use will keep my active game across device reboots. It's called "Sudoku Free" from Genina. I would recommend she check out that one.

Have you read this thread? It is exactly what is happening to people. They are in the middle of games/email/web browsing, switch over to another thing as simple as texting, and when they switch back they have to start all over. There is a MASSIVE thread on XDA forum about this.

 

[svinyard]

I'm at AC all day and I enjoy Phil and Jerry. I'm surprised they haven't helped us "Carry the water" with an open letter to HTC about this. I'm not pissed but I surely didn't expect them to support HTC on it. No hair on fire, just the facts Phil and Jerry....just the facts. The fact is this isn't best in class software design and we are disappointed. This is the place we go to talk about our phones. You are the experts who herald the cause of the people and report on all things Android.

Lets just imagine a company made a phone that had great reception because it used a special uni-body design that aided the antenna. Now most people enjoyed that extra reception BUT it came at a price. If you grabbed the phone in a common way, it would lose reception. This was that companies preference and well within their rights to design this way. Would you support this manufacturer or call a spade a spade.

This multi-tasking methodology might be the manuf. choice and not a bit deal for some people but for Android users expecting top-notch performance and usability, its a step backward. Please recognize this Phil and Jerry and move on with your credibility in-tact.

 

[Impulses]

And in light of the Customs fiasco that's just been announced... I rest my case about manufacturer modifications.

That had nothing to do with manufacturer mods, Apple won the case against HTC but they could/might get every other manufacturer for it too, since the behavior in question is actually stock Android's default.

 

[neoenigma]

A note to Jerry: the next time you want to defend a phone manufacturer why not try and do so in a less condescending manner. I think that is what some people found offensive in your article.

Not only was the article condescending, but so were his comments. They went on to say the exact same story on their podcast. The only person who had the right idea was Cory. I just can not understand Phil and Jerry's attitude on this topic.

It's too late for me to send this phone back. It's not too late to warn everyone I know to stay away from it though. The ball is in HTC's court to fix it... otherwise I think they're going to lose customers.

 

[jaescott]

Has anyone used the evo and confirmed you can't multitask? I can not believe HTC would be that stupid to take away the base of a smartphone.

 

[p2cactus]

So I think the question is....Is 1 GB of ram becoming a number of the past? Are we now at a point in our cell phones that we need more than 1 GB of ram and if so should we suck a 2 year agreement for this device with it only having 1 GB of ram.

This is the answer. These phones with significant third party customizations need more memory. Force closing background tasks is exactly what is happening, and that's classically what you do on Android to fee up memory. Otherwise the launcher gets crunchy or keeps dying, which is also super annoying on a brand new phone.

This is a design flaw in the current crop of high end phones, and I worry they will age very poorly because the demands are not going to decrease.

Sent from my PC36100 using Android Central Forums

 

[rexxman]

I little would go a long way on AC's part. And the subject is very simple. The review did not cover, or discover, this issue. If AC would just use this as an example and assure readers that in the future, the basic functions of devices would be tested and reported, we can all move beyond this discussion. And we get better reviews in the process.

If AC refuses to understand and correct this, continues to respond inappropriately to the criticism, then we are guaranteed this will happen again. Not good for AC, not good for the readers.

Do the right thing AC. It is more then simple, It is professional!

 

[Crispy]

If her Sudoku app "loses" her current game every time it closes, then it's not written properly. The Android framework has specific events and handlers designed to inform an app not only when it's going to "sleep", but also when it's about to be unloaded from memory. They even provide some simple objects for saving game state to disk so that it can be reloaded when the app re-opens. The problem you describe could happen on any phone, if there's enough things being done at once.

I play Sudoku as well, and the app I use will keep my active game across device reboots. It's called "Sudoku Free" from Genina. I would recommend she check out that one.

I have highlighted the problem. There is no possible reason the OS would need to kick an app out of memory unless it really was low on memory. The problem is Sense 4 is very aggressive and always does this. This is totally wrong.

Phones with half the memory are able to keep multiple tasks running in memory and then you can switch between them easily. The problem is the OS (i.e. HTC's changes), not the apps.

 

[Crispy]

What really makes this worse is a lot of Android apps are not written well - they don't save/restore state or listen to power events as well as iOS/WP7 apps do. Simply because they never expected to, and also Android devs have a much harder time since they have to code for multiple targets due to the fragmentation.

 

[icebike]

What really makes this worse is a lot of Android apps are not written well - they don't save/restore state or listen to power events as well as iOS/WP7 apps do. Simply because they never expected to, and also Android devs have a much harder time since they have to code for multiple targets due to the fragmentation.

But when we see the SAME apps reloading on one phone and not on another with similar hardware, and similar use patterns, it's hard to blame the app developer.



Sent from my HOX

 

[cloak.n.dagger]

Can anyone confirm how many apps need to be open before this kind of background killing takes place? When I watch the you tube video where the guy has the E4GLTE next to another phone and is switching between apps side-by-side, it looks like there are more apps open on the E4GLTE than the other phone. I would like to know if this is something that occurs when 10+ or 15+ apps are open in the background or if this happens when just two apps are open. How many apps does it take to run out of 1GB of memory in Sense 4.0?

If we are talking 10+ apps, then we may be making this a bigger deal then it really is. If we are talking about switching between just two open apps (nothing else app wise in the background) then people have a right to be hot about this.

 

[Saneless]

Sense used to run out of memory at times and would "Reload" - often taking 5 seconds to fire up. HTC wrote it so their launcher would never do that again, and make sure that it killed off everything else.

Unfortunately, they're just developers and they probably didn't test it well enough and we get the final product. I hope this gets fixed with an update.

BTW, if Ford or Toyota "customized" the car so that when you stopped at a light it shut off, and had to restart it again everytime it turned green.. technically it's working as designed, but that doesn't mean it's not a dumb ass thing to do to customers.

 

[Caleb Morris]

Hey Phil, I know this thread is about the "broken" multitasking, but I am fairly sure that none of us have actually played with it. So in your experience with the phone so far, how is the multitasking holding up for you? Any problems these posters are having? If you can't say, then can you please have a special section in your review for it when you release it?

 

[cd36]

BTW, if Ford or Toyota "customized" the car so that when you stopped at a light it shut off, and had to restart it again everytime it turned green.. technically it's working as designed, but that doesn't mean it's not a dumb ass thing to do to customers.

Bad example as start stop systems are used in vehicles successfully and can be a big improvement in mpg.

This is more like sizing the electrical system in a car to low so that whenever you roll down the window you have to turn off the radio and once the window is down you have to turn the radio back on.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

[Saneless]

Fair enough, but you get the idea. It's a choice that doesn't benefit the consumer at all, it just makes their bloated launcher come up quicker.

How many times have people on this site ragged on bad decisions, yet you have 2 MAJOR faults from HTC and they're closed over.

Multitasking doesn't work. Second, the One X doesn't have enough usable space

 

[p2cactus]

I too am surprised by the AC response. So the software is working as designed - that doesn't mean the software isn't poorly implemented or thought out, or that we cannot legitimately critique it. Case in point:

We need to keep this alive and post to HTC, if that's possible. The original evo had a 30 FPS cap for quite a while. HTC kept claiming nothing could be done, despite the modding community proving otherwise almost immediately.

Eventually HTC relented and made a change that raised the fps limit to 60, and the experience on the phone was greatly improved.

Keep up the feedback! It can make a difference!

Sent from my PC36100 using Android Central Forums

 

[Crispy]

AC is a big enough site and they could've taken up this issue and side with the users. Or at least stay neutral on the subject. The response I must say is disappointing.

The number of people who are even aware of these issues is very very small and it is important for big sites to constantly push for improvements and make oem's fix mistakes. There will be millions of customers who buy their phones and don't know how to do this kind of testing. They will only become aware their phone is broken by design some time later when its too late to return it, assuming they can even return it. This kind of news needs to hit major news sites.