Friday 16 May 2014

Memory management in Android

Since Android devices are usually battery-powered, Android is designed to manage memory (RAM) to keep power consumption at a minimum, in contrast to desktop operating systems which generally assume they are connected to unlimited mains electricity. When an Android app is no longer in use, the system will automatically suspend it in memory – while the app is still technically "open", suspended apps consume no resources (for example, battery power or processing power) and sit idly in the background until needed again. This has the dual benefit of increasing the general responsiveness of Android devices, since applications do not need to be closed and reopened from scratch each time, and also ensuring that background applications do not consume power needlessly.[65][66]Android manages the apps stored in memory automatically: when memory is low, the system will begin killing apps and processes that have been inactive for a while, in reverse order since they were last used (oldest first). This process is designed to be invisible to the user, such that users do not need to manage memory or the killing of apps themselves.[67][68] However, confusion over Android memory management has resulted in third-party task killers becoming popular on Google Play store; these third-party task killers are generally regarded as doing more harm than good.[69]

No comments:

Post a Comment