Multitasking on Android - Page 3 - maemo.org

aegis | # 21 | 2016-06-24, 16:20 | Report

Originally Posted by pichlo View Post

I can give you plenty of examples where saving and restoring the state wastes the battery rather than saving it. Especially if "restoring" involves starting the application from zero and then reloading the last saved state. If the saved state is "in the cloud", as is quite common nowadays, chances are it may not be exactly the same as it was when you left it but a few seconds behind.

Which OS saves state to "the cloud"?

What we're talking about here is the way Android works, which is that it keeps an instance of the running app in RAM on the device. It keeps it there as much as it can before saving it to local storage if it has to. You'd be nucking futs to have your app state storage "in the cloud".

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marmistrz | # 22 | 2016-06-24, 16:23 | Report

This is inefficient. Some apps could've freed the memory a long time ago, some will be deprived of it.

The whole point is that the user doesn't have to think. And no one cares about the power users.

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pichlo | # 23 | 2016-06-24, 16:49 | Report

Originally Posted by aegis View Post

Which OS saves state to "the cloud"?

Not the OS, the apps themselves do. A lot of them. On Android.

Originally Posted by

You'd be nucking futs to have your app state storage "in the cloud".

Exactly!

But now I see your point. You were talking about the OS implementation, not the user experience. From the user experience, it matters monkey's kidneys what an idle application does. Whether it stays idle in the RAM for as long as possible or is swapped out right away. As long as it does not impair the experience.

We have had a discussion on multitasking before. Even multitasking on Android specifically. It is all too well "ps -aux" showing you a bunch of stuff. By that reckoning, you can say that DOS was a multitasking OS too: it could play a tune while you moved the mouse cursor around the screen. But for me as a user, it is not a real multitasking if a video I am playing stops when I switch to the browser.

Multi = more than one. Task = task. Multitasking = doing more than one task simultaneously. I don't care that the OS can run many processes. If the OS stops me from doing more than one task, then as far as I am concerned, it does not support multitasking. Simples.

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mscion | # 24 | 2016-06-24, 17:25 | Report

Originally Posted by pichlo View Post

Not the OS, the apps themselves do. A lot of them. On Android.

Exactly!

But now I see your point. You were talking about the OS implementation, not the user experience. From the user experience, it matters monkey's kidneys what an idle application does. Whether it stays idle in the RAM for as long as possible or is swapped out right away. As long as it does not impair the experience.

We have had a discussion on multitasking before. Even multitasking on Android specifically. It is all too well "ps -aux" showing you a bunch of stuff. By that reckoning, you can say that DOS was a multitasking OS too: it could play a tune while you moved the mouse cursor around the screen. But for me as a user, it is not a real multitasking if a video I am playing stops when I switch to the browser.

Multi = more than one. Task = task. Multitasking = doing more than one task simultaneously. I don't care that the OS can run many processes. If the OS stops me from doing more than one task, then as far as I am concerned, it does not support multitasking. Simples.

As long as I can play angry birds and watch my favourite video at the same time I'm good...

Last edited by mscion; 2016-06-24 at 17:31.

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imaginaryenemy | # 25 | 2016-06-24, 18:32 | Report

Originally Posted by pichlo View Post

But for me as a user, it is not a real multitasking if a video I am playing stops when I switch to the browser.

Multi = more than one. Task = task. Multitasking = doing more than one task simultaneously. I don't care that the OS can run many processes. If the OS stops me from doing more than one task, then as far as I am concerned, it does not support multitasking. Simples.

This is all doable on stock android (let alone OEM skins like Samsung's Touchwiz and their split screen multitasking). I play videos (including ones from YouTube) through VLC in the background while I'm doing any number of tasks.

Again, it depends on what the user is looking for. My multitasking experience is no more hindered on Android than it was on Harmattan.

Last edited by imaginaryenemy; 2016-06-24 at 23:41.

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padmaraj.ravi | # 26 | 2016-06-25, 14:18 | Report

Originally Posted by imaginaryenemy View Post

This is all doable on stock android (let alone OEM skins like Samsung's Touchwiz and their split screen multitasking). I play videos (including ones from YouTube) through VLC in the background while I'm doing any number of tasks.

Again, it depends on what the user is looking for. My multitasking experience is no more hindered on Android than it was on Harmattan.

Thats nice. If you can play video in the background and edit a word file, that is good enough multitasking for me. But may i know which phone you have. I am pretty sure samsungs (the ones without the ability for splitscreen) cannot do that.

Let me tell you a typical mutltiasking scenario where i have seen most android fail. You try an load a website. Here in india we are still with 2g/3g. So an average website in desktop mode takes around 5 seconds to load. With E71,E72,E7,n900,n9 or BB10 i always try to open some other app in the mean time. (May be check messages in whatsapp or read the rest of the pdf which i had open) and then come back to the browser to see if the web page has loaded. All the android phones i have used till now reloads or wouldnt have finished downloading when i come back after say about 20 secs. That said my android exposure is limited to my cousin's moto x(2 GB ram), my sisters moto g (2 GB) and my parents samsungs with 1-2gb ram. Can the present androids do that?

Last edited by padmaraj.ravi; 2016-06-25 at 14:24.

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imaginaryenemy | # 27 | 2016-06-25, 22:31 | Report

Originally Posted by padmaraj.ravi View Post

Thats nice. If you can play video in the background and edit a word file, that is good enough multitasking for me. But may i know which phone you have. I am pretty sure samsungs (the ones without the ability for splitscreen) cannot do that.

Let me tell you a typical mutltiasking scenario where i have seen most android fail. You try an load a website. Here in india we are still with 2g/3g. So an average website in desktop mode takes around 5 seconds to load. With E71,E72,E7,n900,n9 or BB10 i always try to open some other app in the mean time. (May be check messages in whatsapp or read the rest of the pdf which i had open) and then come back to the browser to see if the web page has loaded. All the android phones i have used till now reloads or wouldnt have finished downloading when i come back after say about 20 secs. That said my android exposure is limited to my cousin's moto x(2 GB ram), my sisters moto g (2 GB) and my parents samsungs with 1-2gb ram. Can the present androids do that?

Here is a gif of my Moto X 2014 running 6.0 doing exactly what you said.
I opened Firefox, opened a website in a new window, opened Reddit, went back to Firefox. Page loaded completely in background.

http://imgur.com/bWftT4v

Sent from my XT1095 using Tapatalk

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padmaraj.ravi | # 28 | 2016-06-26, 12:22 | Report

Yes it works. I tested with android 6.0 in my sis's moto G as well. So then android multitasking behavior has had subtle changes over the iterations. One thing i noticed was that firefox does this always (downloading pages in background) while the stock browser was unreliable at times. With heavy websites , sometimes it loads in the background , and at other time it reloads. Have you noticed this? One another question is if such background tasks happen in android , what is so different in case of stock browser pausing youtube? Makes me wonder is there differential treatment of apps with respect to multitasking? Phone and other os apps definitely will have differential treatment, but other than that?

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imaginaryenemy | # 29 | 2016-06-26, 20:08 | Report

Originally Posted by padmaraj.ravi View Post

Yes it works. I tested with android 6.0 in my sis's moto G as well. So then android multitasking behavior has had subtle changes over the iterations. One thing i noticed was that firefox does this always (downloading pages in background) while the stock browser was unreliable at times. With heavy websites , sometimes it loads in the background , and at other time it reloads. Have you noticed this? One another question is if such background tasks happen in android , what is so different in case of stock browser pausing youtube? Makes me wonder is there differential treatment of apps with respect to multitasking? Phone and other os apps definitely will have differential treatment, but other than that?

Yeah, just like any OS, some apps are written to be better at multitasking than others. Since everyone is so concerned with resource conservation, many pause background tasks by default (especially those made by Google). But there are always better options out there.

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sicelo | # 30 | 2016-06-26, 21:16 | Report

For those talking about playing videos while editing documents, N900 can actually do it. The video plays via tv-out, while you do whatever you want on the screen. The stock video player however does not allow this.

Those saying VLC/Android can play while they do other tasks - yes, any phone (at least Nokia) with a music player can do that, even Nokia S40 (even the older versions such as in Nokia 6230i). This is clearly not the multitasking being referred to in this thread.

Finally, it's quite apparent that some of us, myself included, want the same type of multitasking as on a desktop, even though there might be a battery/power penalty to pay. Others are happy with a stripped-down version of multitasking that allows more power savings. Overall, I will agree that what Android has is multitasking, just not the multitasking that the majority of us here want.

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