And I don’t mean just Google’s Android. Every single iteration. With their stupid memory management for PoWeR sAvInG.
I was typing up a rant on how incredibly boring and stupid Disclosure Day was when I just quickly switched to Firefox to look up a character’s name when Android decided that I was done using my Lemmy client and just outright killed it without even giving it enough time to save my comment to drafts, like it usually does.
You can never be sure when you leave an app whether it will continue doing what it’s supposed to or if it will be frozen or killed.
I’ve got 4 GB of RAM and multiple CPU cores. That should be enough to run a dozen apps in parallel. My frickin N900 with 128 MB had better multitasking than a modern Android smartphone!
Using a card on a web site. Verified by Visa web page: “we have emailed you the code”. So I go to the email app and get the code. Switch back to the web page. Web page: “what? Who the fuck are you?”
I’ve also switched from the web browser to my password manager with the password manager integration and as soon as I’ve chosen the password it goes back to the browser and it reloads the page without filling in the frickin password.
This wouldn’t have occurred to you if you used Summit for Lemmy.
But doctor, I am
Pagliacciusing Summit.90 % of the time it works every time.
Your phone. Not my phone, so it doesn’t seem like an android problem.
Or possibly the apps you are using? I don’t think I have ever had this problem.
But that said: I would love to replace it all with a true Linux phone.
But that said: I would love to replace it all with a true Linux phone.
4GB RAM, a modern web browser, and no swap file/partition. That doesn’t work well anywhere. Not Android, not GNU/Linux, not Windows, not macOS.
Bullshit
I’ve got 4 GB of RAM
Sadly that’s an almost unusable amount these days. The OS will use half of that just sitting idle, and Google Play Services will use a fifth of the remainder (you can enable Developer Mode and view running services to see this yourself). 4 gigs is solidly in the “only one or two apps open at a time” range.
(It doesn’t help that every Android app includes its own separate copies of all its libraries and dependencies for compatibility reasons. There’s no such thing as a lightweight app without going out of your way to avoid the normal development ecosystem)
Android also doesn’t use swap (storing unused/rarely accessed memory contents on the disk for later), instead shifting stale memory pages to a compressed block in RAM (zram), so once it starts filling up with cached background apps it has to start killing apps or the system will hang. The less RAM you have, the sooner this will happen, and both Lemmy clients and web browsers use a ton of RAM.
Android also doesn’t use swap
Years ago a friend of mine actually enabled swap on a MicroSD. It worked, no idea for how long, though. That type of memory isn’t reliable enough to handle this.
Even setting aside the wear and tear issues with flash storage, swap and zram sadly don’t play nice together. Zram will fill up with stale memory while swap gets the fresh stuff, which is the exact opposite of what you want and causes awful performance problems.
I disable power management on the apps I use often and never run into the issue. Perhaps that might help create a less frustrating experience for you.
I disable power management on the apps I use often and never run into the issue.
Power management does nothing when RAM is as constrained as 4GB
I’ve got 4 GB of RAM and multiple CPU cores. That should be enough to run a dozen apps in parallel.
In which world is 4GB enough to multitask a web browser under any OS?
You’re right. I remember even my Win98 machine had to have 16GB of RAM or couldn’t get anything done.
I remember even my Win98 machine had to have 16GB of RAM or couldn’t get anything done.
Try to get a modern web browser working on your Win98 machine. The problem is modern web browsers eating RAM, not Android.
Found the Chromium dev!
But seriously, I’ve got an old laptop still in use and that’s getting along fine on 4 GB. Firefox, KDE, Libre Office, background tasks, some light gaming, no problem.
Usually good programs only take lots of memory when it’s available.
But seriously, I’ve got an old laptop still in use and that’s getting along fine on 4 GB. Firefox, KDE, Libre Office, background tasks, some light gaming, no problem.
Let me guess: That old laptop has a swap file or partition?
If you dislike Android so much, get https://commerce.jolla.com/products/jolla-phone-october-2026 Should pair well with your new >1000 Euro Steam Machine.
I’m increasingly trying to use my (GNU/Linux) laptop where I can, and just tether the phone to it when I need mobile data connectivity.
It’s not a complete drop-in solution. You can’t just use a laptop with one hand while waiting in a line (well, there used to be palmtops, but those seem to be a mostly-dead class of PCs today). It consumes more power. Desktop OS software doesn’t really natively have a concept of “being on WiFi versus being on mobile data”, which is nice to have in phone software.
But where you can sit down and use one…man, it eliminates a ton of my irritations with phones. The locked-down stuff in most phone OSes. Those fiddly, limited onscreen keyboards. The tradeoffs that the systems make to try to minimize power use and simplify memory management from an end user standpoint (because a lot of users don’t get the concept of closing programs) like the one you mention go away. Hardware is more capable and expandable, and the manufacturers have way more physical space to work with, so you don’t have manufacturers throwing out things like physical headphones jacks to try to get a bit more space. The limited cooling on phones goes away. Better in terms of repairability — I just replaced a laptop battery. If my phone’s battery died, I’d throw out the phone. Using multiple programs at once, as you were doing, is much better; phone OSes just aren’t really optimal for that.
I’m honestly impressed with what smartphone vendors have done within the constraints of what they have to work with, especially in how much better touchscreens have gotten over the decades — they used to be far, far worse. But they still just face a ton of limitations imposed by the form factor.
Honestly, the state of mobile OSs is quite sad. Everything is locked down, it’s a duopoly of shit and shittier, and the Linux alternative just isn’t daily driver worthy for the vast majority of users. And that’s not because the development isn’t going well - it’s because phones have so much more proprietary shit that needs drivers, and that’s if you can even unlock the bootloader in the first place, otherwise you’re SOL.
If your lemmy client is Voyager, its not an Android only issue. Happens on iOS as well.
You think that’s bad, I got 12GB of memory and am only ever using 8GB of it, and it still pulls the same shit. Wild.
I’ve got 8GB and I’ve never had this problem 🤷♂️
Funny, I switched to Android because iOS was doing shit like this.
Yeah, that one is even worse.
Mishandling an OOM killer event is generally speaking developer error.
To me it looks like sometimes Android is sending KILL instead of TERM. because sometimes it works like it should and sometimes it doesn’t. Not just with the one app.
If it’s an open source app, you could test what’s happening in
onSaveInstanceStateandonCreatewithsavedInstanceState/onRestoreInstanceState, maybe by attaching some tracing to it.
I feel like this might be the wrong community for this
Although I am mildly infuriated that you hate Android
Although I am mildly infuriated that you hate Android
OP uses 4GB RAM but blames the OS.
Android does need a lot of ram these days especially if you are running stock
I personally wouldn’t use a phone with 4GB unless my usecase was fairly basic. If you are running multiple (Heavy) websites and apps the system will need to use swap will slow down multitasking
A bunch of the “fediverse” reacts poorly to this. But, speaking as someone who never even considered Apple, using Android doesn’t have to mean it’s smart to go into intentional denial of a long list of shit that sucks, just to be a fanboy.
using Android doesn’t have to mean it’s smart to go into intentional denial of a long list of shit that sucks, just to be a fanboy.
No OS can do magic and turn 4GB RAM into a suitable amount for memory hungry modern web browsers.
I mean to be fair I hate Android too, I just also hate iOS :)
Yes it’s a very stupid memory management meant to improve battery life by killing any app thats been running at all…
Very frustrating and idiot.
Try play any game nowadays… The instant you switch away bam, killed.
It’s baked into android. AOSP I mean, any and all android flavours.
Disabling optimization for battery doesn’t help with any bigger app.
I don’t love Android either and would be much happier back on iOS but with everything happening in tech I’ll use Graphene until the seas look a bit smoother
Ugh, don’t get me started on iOS. Wanted to copy some files onto my daughter’s iPad and discovered that it stops the copy operation when you click on the folder that’s being copied. Maybe even when you click anywhere, didn’t dare test that.
I just wish Nokia had open sourced Maemo. That had everything you need fully working.
nokia did open source maemo and it’s still being developed by the community. look up on maemo leste. unfortunately they only support very few phones, including the nokia n900, motorola droid 4 xt894 and the original pinephone.
really hoping i can daily drive that os at some point on some modern powerful hardware
I thought Maemo Leste was a reimplementation effort and not a continuation.
