My application launcher force closes on a fairly regular basis these days. This is a non-rooted phone and see my earlier post for a list of about 90% of the apps I have installed. Afaik I don't have anything out of the ordinary.
Basically the launcher seems to crash more often when I'm opening a folder or trying to move a widget. The thing is, once it restarts, I can then do that action with no issues, and often can't reproduce the problem for quite a few minutes. It feels like it's a memory-leak or something. I tried removing some of my folders and seeing if just having less shortcuts loaded would help, and the results seem inconclusive. I still get crashes, but maybe not quite as often. I also tried going through each of my three toggle widgets to make sure they weren't the cause.
I'm sure other people have run into this on Android, but I haven't seen a lot of screaming about it on this forum, so is it just something people have learned to work around? Is there an established way to figure out what's causing it? I apologize is this is a really common issue, but this is my first android phone and I'm starting to wonder if I'm alone in this.
(I'm using the following widgets: touchdown email, touchdown calendar, RTM, Pandora, Beyondpod, google weather/news, 2 folders with about 5 shortcuts each, probably about 5-6 spaces open across all home screens)
I've had this issue as well. I can reproduce it, but the circumstances under which it happens would rarely come up. I move widgets and shortcuts around, after 20-30 moves, I'll get a crash when pressing on something to move it. Leads me to think its just getting overloaded.
On the other hand, when I first got my N1, something went wrong with it, force closes would happen every 10-60 second for some reason. Regardless, using Home++, I rarely get any issues.
Its a system bug. Discussed in a few threads.
+1 for Home++.
Its a good idea to remove all your widgets from Launcher, coz it still runs under Home++ and starts all the widgets even if they are not active on home++.
It started driving me mad. If I minimize browser, I can't be sure it won't close. Not only minimizing for longer periods, but short ones as well - wanted to reply an sms when a page was loading, but when I got back to it, it started over. And all the loaded tabs were gone! Saving states my ass, it takes time to load a page from zero and only the active browsing window remains. How to make this "multitasker" multitask?
does this also happen if you return to the browser by holding home?
kendong2 said:
does this also happen if you return to the browser by holding home?
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Yes, that's the only way I switch betwen apps.
Have you installed the 'system-based' taskiller mod by any chance (you know, the one that was announced here that automatically keeps memory free by modifying the default thresholds for killing apps)?
If so, I reckon that's the issue! Either that, or you have too much running, so popping the browser into the background makes it a background task and it gets killed cos you're really short of RAM.
Let us know if you have used the tweak though...
@kengdong...
it doesn't matter how you change the apps.
For android it's the same, whether you tap an icon on a homescreen/list or whether you select it from the "task switch" thing... all that does is listing the last recently used applications but still tapping them results in the same internal action.
Source: Android SDK Documentation
I've had pretty much the same issue since I got the phone back in November (I guess I've just gotten used to it by now). I'm never really sure when I switch back to the browser if it will retain the page loaded and any other windows, or if it will reset, close the other windows, and have to reload the active page. I'm on the stock Telus ROM, no custom ROM, not rooted, no tweaks, nothing extra (I've been waiting patiently for 2.1 to come out before messing with custom ROMS).
olafos said:
Source: Android SDK Documentation
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Click to collapse
thx for the heads up, i wasn't sure about this, actually i was asking to maybe get an answer to this worked
anon2122 said:
Have you installed the 'system-based' taskiller mod by any chance (you know, the one that was announced here that automatically keeps memory free by modifying the default thresholds for killing apps)?
If so, I reckon that's the issue! Either that, or you have too much running, so popping the browser into the background makes it a background task and it gets killed cos you're really short of RAM.
Let us know if you have used the tweak though...
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Click to collapse
No, I have stock rom and I have never used any task killer or related app / tweak.
And I don't run too much stuff.. only music player, messaging and sense's facebook perhaps. If music player is paused, why can't it quit it instead... I prefer multitasking of my past htc s730 which had like 7 megs of free ram after booting.
Even after a hard reset, this behavior remains.
i dont know.. it works fine for me....
1.. maybe there is a setting in the browser.. to always refresh.
2.. you have a repair issue.. Need to take it in to your local service provider repair center. Let them see your issue.
Dan330 said:
i dont know.. it works fine for me....
1.. maybe there is a setting in the browser.. to always refresh.
2.. you have a repair issue.. Need to take it in to your local service provider repair center. Let them see your issue.
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Come on, it's no hardware issue. Most of the time the browser stays, but u just can't be sure about that because it sometimes just closes. I think that it's an issue with Android's STUPID memory management, which also has a scheduled "quit all" script.
Yesterday I opened up a few articles on the browser and decided to read them later. This morning they all remained and I was pleasantly surprised I could read them. This very moment, though, they are gone by now even though I haven't quit the browser - probably that 'quit all' script kicked in.
There could be something in settings, where you could chose apps which would not close ever unless quit..
I would love if Android apps were quitable without any automatic mem management.
Suggest to grab AutoKiller or MinFreeManager, which are just frontends to Android's memory management (also they reapply settings at boot time, as the system file that's being modified is reset every boot.)
See what your current settings are, and lower them (e.g. use "moderate" preset). Just search XDA for autokiller or minfreemanager for more info.
Pressing home should only move that application to the background (pressing back should close it).
If you are pressing home and applications are still closing then there must be a task killer of some sort in place closing it for you.
Lennyuk said:
Pressing home should only move that application to the background (pressing back should close it).
If you are pressing home and applications are still closing then there must be a task killer of some sort in place closing it for you.
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Click to collapse
You obviously have not read the topic.
No task killers, tasks dont neceaarily close, its juast that u cant be sure they will remain in memory.
Lennyuk said:
If you are pressing home and applications are still closing then there must be a task killer of some sort in place closing it for you.
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Click to collapse
Yes - it's the standard Android process management rather than a 3rd party task killer.
I guess the browser is given a low priority and is one of the first apps to be killed.
Regards,
Dave
I've noticed a serious problem with the way android handles multitasking, at least for me. if I am using opera mini browsing, and I switch to the built in browser and go to a bookmark and load a page, now when I'm done and I go back to opera mini it starts a brand new session of opera. I've lost my page that I had open.
my free RAM during this is around 35 mb. this is why I think we should have control over what runs in the background rather than the OS just loading up everything and deciding for us. I don't have any services or anything running during this time, and I'm on the stock ROM. anyone else experienced this? anyone think this is a serious usability issue?
I've been testing this every which way, using either the home button to switch or long pressing home button to switch, and every single time opera closes.
my current free
No, that is just the way opera was made.
Why blame the os its the app...
Yep, its only Opera. I don't use it anyways, but when I did - I do remember this issue, well I guess its an issue..
its not opera because this issue doesn't happen if you do not go to the bookmarks of the default browser. go ahead and try it out. I can go open 10 other apps and multi task, and I can still return to opera mini on the same page I left it at. its most certainly not a problem with opera mini. It's a problem with the way the OS handles certain events giving them priorities over others, I.e. default browser bookmarks gets some higher priority. so again if we had the ability to actually control what we want to run, it would be better.
Sent from my Nexus One using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk
Wait a second, my Opera stays on the same page I left off on, even if I plenty of other applications open. A lot.. Maybe cause I'm rooted, and I have more RAM at the time? I am also using Dolphin, and the default.. and it still is leaving off at the same page.
RogerPodacter said:
my free RAM during this is around 35 mb.
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This sounds fairly low.
How many apps do you have?
Are you rooted / using a custom rom?
Paul22000 said:
This sounds fairly low.
How many apps do you have?
Are you rooted / using a custom rom?
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He said he is using the stock ROM in the first post. :/
Eclair~ said:
He said he is using the stock ROM in the first post. :/
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Woops, missed that somehow.
Well... There's the problem haha!
ok maybe I jumped the gun, because I closed all my apps in one swoop and still only had 30 mb free RAM. so I did a reboot and now my opera mini does not close no matter what I do.
that's strange though, I guess its good to reboot once in a while as something ate up all my RAM. it was at the point where I closed every service and every app with a task manager, and still had barely any ram. my bad guys.
Sent from my Nexus One using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk
RogerPodacter said:
that's strange though, I guess its good to reboot once in a while as something ate up all my RAM. it was at the point where I closed every service and every app with a task manager, and still had barely any ram. my bad guys.
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Not your bad, Opera's bad. They should do a better job of saving application state so that when the OS shuts it down it doesn't cause you to lose the page you were on.
OK i'm having this same exact problem again. All day yesterday i was browsing with opera mini, press home button to perform other tasks, and come back and it is still showing the same web page i was reading.
but then last night all i had to do was check my email real quick, i switch away from opera with the home button press, and go back to opera and it now has to re-load the entire app, taking me to the start page again. surely this is some problem with the way android OS handles multitasking, no? i mean the app obviously was saving my page all day yesterday, just like its supposed to. but then it suddenly STOPS doing this.
my free RAM was again down near 30MB because the OS has loaded a million apps that i dont need. yet the OS then will close the one app i DO need, opera mini, while leaving all these useless apps running, which i didnt even ever need or open in the first place!!
am i the only one who has a problem with this method of OS task management?
i'm sure a reboot will free up all the RAM and things will work normally again. but isnt android a linux based OS? shouldnt linux be able to run for days or even weeks without the need to reboot the phone just to set the RAM back on track?
very frustrated!
If you have a mirror handy, kindly gaze into it and you will find your problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFytHoXdG3E
lol
RogerPodacter said:
surely this is some problem with the way android OS handles multitasking, no?
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Click to collapse
No.
Again, this isn't a problem with Androids method of multitasking, it's a problem with the way Opera was written. It's not saving it's state properly. It should, but they haven't written it properly.
Opera obviously doesn't behave the way you expect, so my suggestion is to use something else until they have fixed it.
I just can't get on board with that argument. so the OS is giving priority to apps like tuneWiki, which I haven't opened in 3 weeks, over an app that I just switched away from 10 seconds ago is the best way for the OS to operate?
I would agree if my issue happened every single time. but 95% of the time opera stays open like its supposed to. so that tells me it IS doing what its supposed to. but in certain situations it just magically disappears even though it was just in use a few moments before.
I agree that opera is not saving state properly when the OS decides to close it. but why can't the OS leave it open with all the RAM and CPU power this phone has? this situation shouldn't even be happening whether opera is coded right or not.
I made a post on the opera forums to see if maybe they know about it and have a solution.
RogerPodacter said:
I just can't get on board with that argument. so the OS is giving priority to apps like tuneWiki, which I haven't opened in 3 weeks, over an app that I just switched away from 10 seconds ago is the best way for the OS to operate?
I would agree if my issue happened every single time. but 95% of the time opera stays open like its supposed to. so that tells me it IS doing what its supposed to. but in certain situations it just magically disappears even though it was just in use a few moments before.
I agree that opera is not saving state properly when the OS decides to close it. but why can't the OS leave it open with all the RAM and CPU power this phone has? this situation shouldn't even be happening whether opera is coded right or not.
I made a post on the opera forums to see if maybe they know about it and have a solution.
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Click to collapse
I'm not sure you're understanding what everyone else in this thread is saying, so here's another way to think about it:
Can you name another big-name app that behaves in the same constant state-losing behavior as Opera?
RogerPodacter said:
so the OS is giving priority to apps like tuneWiki, which I haven't opened in 3 weeks, over an app that I just switched away from 10 seconds ago is the best way for the OS to operate?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The fact that it feels like tuneWiki hasn't been closed even though you haven't used it in 3 weeks lead me to believe that the tuneWiki guys have done it correctly and as a result the user can't tell if the app has been running the whole time or if it is actually loading up a fresh copy of it (loading speed might be the only way to tell). Opera with tabs open probably uses a lot more memory than most programs, so it's a good candidate to close down when memory is needed which is probably why it keeps happening to you.
What Opera should be doing is taking a snapshot of the tabs you have open when you switch to a different applications and writing it to permanent storage so that if it does happen that it get's closed down by the system, when it starts up again later it can reload all of the tabs. It doesn't need to store the page data, just the URLs. I don't know why they don't do that for Opera Mini as their desktop browser does it perfectly.
If you are interested, this developer video on Android application lifecyle might clear things up a bit:
http://developer.android.com/videos/index.html#v=fL6gSd4ugSI
Send Opera an email and tell them to use meta data to remember where you were.
RogerPodacter said:
I just can't get on board with that argument. so the OS is giving priority to apps like tuneWiki, which I haven't opened in 3 weeks, over an app that I just switched away from 10 seconds ago is the best way for the OS to operate?
I would agree if my issue happened every single time. but 95% of the time opera stays open like its supposed to. so that tells me it IS doing what its supposed to. but in certain situations it just magically disappears even though it was just in use a few moments before.
I agree that opera is not saving state properly when the OS decides to close it. but why can't the OS leave it open with all the RAM and CPU power this phone has? this situation shouldn't even be happening whether opera is coded right or not.
I made a post on the opera forums to see if maybe they know about it and have a solution.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Each properly coded app speaks up and says "I Have _____displaying on screen, I have ____data on hand and I'm doing______".
If the OS says "sorry bud, you gotta go away cause the guy that's always fondling me(you the user) needs to do something else, go away" then that program is killed and that information saved.
Next time you open up your app, the OS asks "alright, I just got finished showing this guy settings, now he needs you again, do you remember where you were when I sent you away?"
If yes, then boom, you are back to where you were. If not then, your app goes back to square one.
Seems opera mini isn't properly implementing their save states. It's an issue with the application not the OS.
RogerPodacter said:
I just can't get on board with that argument.
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Click to collapse
YOU MUST UNDERSTAND THAT THIS IS OPERA'S FAULT. THE DEVELOPERS DID NOT PROPERLY WRITE THE PROGRAM TO SAVE CURRENT STATE. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANDROID OS
RogerPodacter said:
I've noticed a serious problem with the way android handles multitasking, at least for me. if I am using opera mini browsing, and I switch to the built in browser and go to a bookmark and load a page, now when I'm done and I go back to opera mini it starts a brand new session of opera. I've lost my page that I had open.
my free RAM during this is around 35 mb. this is why I think we should have control over what runs in the background rather than the OS just loading up everything and deciding for us. I don't have any services or anything running during this time, and I'm on the stock ROM. anyone else experienced this? anyone think this is a serious usability issue?
I've been testing this every which way, using either the home button to switch or long pressing home button to switch, and every single time opera closes.
my current free
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is already an issue that has been brought up in a previous post. They came to the conclusion that it was the app, and in all common sense, it is the app. There is no reason to blame the OS, that is Android. Might i recommend rooting your phone and uploading a fine ROM like CyanogenMOD? I think it would be on your best interest to do so.
so the OS is giving priority to apps like tuneWiki, which I haven't opened in 3 weeks, over an app that I just switched away from 10 seconds ago is th
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The fact that it feels like tuneWiki hasn't been closed even though you haven't used it in 3 weeks lead me to believe that the tuneWiki guys have done it correctly and as a result the user can't tell if the app has been running the whole time or if it is actually loading up a fresh copy of it (loading speed might be the only way to tell). Opera with tabs open probably uses a lot more memory than most programs, so it's a good candidate to close down when memory is needed which is probably why it keeps happening to you.
What Opera should be doing is taking a snapshot of the tabs you have open when you switch to a different applications and writing it to permanent storage so that if it does happen that it get's closed down by the system, when it starts up again later it can reload all of the tabs. It doesn't need to store the page data, just the URLs. I don't know why they don't do that for Opera Mini as their desktop browser does it perfectly.
If you are interested, this developer video on Android application lifecyle might clear things up a bit:
http://developer.android.com/videos/index.html#v=fL6gSd4ugSI
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Click to collapse
just to be clear I literally haven't opened tuneWiki in 3 weeks, and have done many reboots since then. it was just an example of one of the many apps I see running in the background, which I've never opened in weeks, yet the one I just used is the first to close.
to the other replies, I'm not confused and understand what's going on. I just think its a major flaw whether opera is saving state correctly or not.
9 out of 10 times I can switch away, do my tasks, come back and opera is still there where I was browsing. I just don't like the inconsistency. I feel like I have nocontrol over what and how I want my apps to run.
also if opera mini DID have to save my tabs and reload them, then that would be horrible as it takes certain time to get the proxy server going and then reload the pages. the current method where It's just instantly there, still in memory, is the best way for it to happen. and it DOES work this way majority of the time.
I don't know if anyone else has been having this issue but I've been having a starnge problem on the gingerbread leak. This has been present for both stock and drod's blurrybread rom.
When using my browser to watch videos, I will often leave the browser running and use different apps while the video is loading. This was fine until I went to gingerbread. When coming back to my browser, I would find that the browser had stopped running and had to reload the page causing me to lose all progress on the loading video. I have tried several different browsers and the same thing has happened.
Is there any way to stop this? It really is a pain to have to stay in the browser and watch it load
Nobody at all?
I'm pretty sure Gingerbread is still at the default of 25mb of ram free at least. But you can try downloading spare parts and changing it to mild or non-aggressive whatever it's called. What I usually do is use a task killer to end all my apps before opening the browser, since flash takes up a lot of memory. That way if I do close out of it for a second it usually won't get killed. Hope this helps.
Thanks for the reply. But it is usually fine if I go back after a second. I'm talking aboutt if I leave for 15-30 minutes. Is there a way to exclude the browser I use from the internal task killer?
Not that I know of. I think Android decides how "important" the app is to keep open. Usually their apps come first.
That makes sense. I'll have to find a way to set my own priorities inside of it