"Removing" vs. Closing Apps on ICS

[jephanie]

I posted a question in this thread on the Ice Cream Sandwich forum but that board isn't nearly as active as this one.

My OP was: So much has been made of the swipe gesture to remove an application from the recent apps view but does that action actually close the applications?

And this video posted on 11/28 emphatically states that the action does not actually close the apps, just removes them from the recent apps list.

So does anyone here have any better info/insight about this?

 

[Dcronin05]

Bump, I'd like to know this too. And if anyone knows do they also know if the stock task manager has been improved at all? For instance does it still take as many "clicks" to get to the option to stop a running process?

 

[Poopai]

There's so many conflicting statements about this in all the reviews I've read and watched that I don't know what to believe.

 

[qnet]

That's a good question. I heard that they don't actually close them but, I'm not sure that's true.

 

[goldkear]

I've heard it closes them, but some may still have background processes running. for example twitter will still have a background process to check for updates if you have it set to do so, so closing the app won't close that process.

 

[Dcronin05]

I've heard it closes them, but some may still have background processes running. for example twitter will still have a background process to check for updates if you have it set to do so, so closing the app won't close that process.

I'd prefer this over fully stopping the process. The facebook app for instance sometimes stays running and drains the battery so the ability to close the app easily but not prevent it from receiving updates would be nice.

 

[anon(512898)]

Lumenii posted this in another thread:

Swiping an app away will effectively "kill" most apps. You can test this out using ADB if you have the SDK installed. Swipe everything out of your recents list, then launch the browser. Use ADB to run 'ps' on the device and verify that the com.google.android.browser process is running. Go to the home screen, it's still running. Launch some other apps, and the com.google.android.browser process is still there. Swipe it out of the recents list, however, and the process is gone.
You can create a test app to further verify, and log the onDestroy() call in your Activity. It's not called when you back or home out of the app, or when you launch other apps. It does get called when you swipe the app out of the recents list though.
I do agree that the recent apps list isn't really "multitasking". The apps in the list aren't necessarily even running, the processes could have been killed by the memory manager long before you try to re-open it. However, you can't argue that the only purpose is to jump quickly to other apps when the swiping makes the actual process go away.

source: reddit

 

[ManBearPig618]

I hope it at least closes them. What would be the point of just clearing them from the recent app list?

Sent from my DROID BIONIC using Tapatalk

 

[zkSharks]

Yeah, this is my post from the other thread:

Swiping an app out of the list...

...may kill some applications.
...may not kill some applications.
...will end background processes if/when appropriate.

Swiping an app away will effectively "kill" most apps. You can test this out using ADB if you have the SDK installed. Swipe everything out of your recents list, then launch the browser. Use ADB to run 'ps' on the device and verify that the com.google.android.browser process is running. Go to the home screen, it's still running. Launch some other apps, and the com.google.android.browser process is still there. Swipe it out of the recents list, however, and the process is gone.

You can create a test app to further verify, and log the onDestroy() call in your Activity. It's not called when you back or home out of the app, or when you launch other apps. It does get called when you swipe the app out of the recents list though.

I do agree that the recent apps list isn't really "multitasking". The apps in the list aren't necessarily even running, the processes could have been killed by the memory manager long before you try to re-open it. However, you can't argue that the only purpose is to jump quickly to other apps when the swiping makes the actual process go away.

[via Reddit]

Also, see the following image as a follow-up on the quote above:

[via XDA-Developers]

The last line shows the browser app having ended.

 

[MowDownJoe]

Y'know, if you have to quote someone on reddit, you're quoting the wrong guy on reddit. A Google engineer posted there that it doesn't kill the whole process, but calls finish(). The difference being that the app will finish up anything its doing, and that the background Linux process will still be lurking around to allow that app to launch faster should you relaunch it (although the Activity, ie, all the stuff you usually see, is closed out).

 

[anon(512898)]

Y'know, if you have to quote someone on reddit, you're quoting the wrong guy on reddit. A Google engineer posted there that it doesn't kill the whole process, but calls finish(). The difference being that the app will finish up anything its doing, and that the background Linux process will still be lurking around to allow that app to launch faster should you relaunch it (although the Activity, ie, all the stuff you usually see, is closed out).

But with a gig of ram, does it even need to behave differently, I couldn't care less if the application stays in memory to be quickly relaunched, swiping away the application stops any foreground activities that are going on and that is all I really want In a task manager.