Multitasking is a joke on the One X!

NextNexus said:

What in the world did HTC do to Android ICS mulitasking!? Apps seem to be completely removed from cache every single time they're closed for ~30 seconds. They also no longer re-open in the same state that you left them! If I leave the browser, it needs to reload the web page. If I leave a game, I need to start from the beginning. If I pause and exit Slacker radio for a minute, the app closes and I can't even resume my music with the headphones button! I need to re-open the app and start playing all over again.

With my old Galaxy Nexus I never had ANY of these issues and multitasking was clearly the best of any smartphone on the market. HTC has completely crippled this device and it's becoming more and more frustrating (push email notifications & sms notifications are a whole other mess). It seems HTC has created Sense to focus more on preserving battery than focusing on creating a good user experience. The first few days with the phone were great but as more and more of these "instances" pop up, this phone is beginning to seem less and less powerful and intuitive.

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I agree, they're using very aggressive memory management.

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Ya its not even like saved state. Its just a new icon for your previously opened apps.

This is one area where I wish I still had my gnex. HOwever everything else is better on this phone.

With root available, you can probably tweak this a bit with the likes of auto killer, or a similar min free tweaking app.

Music works fine, hell it even remember my last song and position played after a reboot, using htc music.

I made two videos of the problem:





If I just tried to copy and paste these links and make this post on my one x it would have never worked, would have kept reloading the page and forget everything I typed. Lol.

demarton said:

Music works fine, hell it even remember my last song and position played after a reboot, using htc music.

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Does streaming google music play(app) work in the background ( while using navigation or a browser ) ?

With auto killer, i just tested, and i can keep 3 apps running in the memory. Try it out.

edit* scratch that, i tryed after a few minutes of inactivity, reloads.

I believe the reason they are using such aggressive memory management is because on the One X International Version Sense would constantly crash and you would see the "loading" screen.

Frankly I dont know which is more annoying...

spyz88 said:

I believe the reason they are using such aggressive memory management is because on the One X International Version Sense would constantly crash and you would see the "loading" screen.

Frankly I dont know which is more annoying...

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Oh it still does that also, but it isn't a crash, it happens when you go back to the home screen, you just see "loading"

I am just hoping the phone is still fast and has good battery life once/if this is fixed.

Lets hope we get root soon. I'm sure some custom roms will cure this issue

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Bigjim1488 said:

Lets hope we get root soon. I'm sure some custom roms will cure this issue

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

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Root is already possible since yesterday. Custom ROM is not possible until we get bootloader unlocked.

i'm guessing that's why my simiclock doesn't update after i don't touch my phone for a long period of time (overnight)

In the developer settings, there is an option to set the limit of background processes. The default is set to "standard limit." Does anyone know what this limit is, or if changing it to 4 processes might actually help?

Edit: just tried and it clearly does not help.
Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

Try going to settings developer opinions and look under apps and make sure those settings are to your liking. It has a setting for turning off apps right away and how many apps can run in the background.

Edit: I keep on going in and out of apps trying this but unless I'm out for like 5 min its not making me start over Pandora. Try clicking and unclicking apps close right away.

Sent from my HTC One X using xda premium

The issue definitely needs addressing, and I'm sure it's not a "what was HTC thinking" situation so much as a bug that they'll fix.

I've noticed the issue myself, but it hasn't annoyed me to the point of complaining. Maybe it's better on my phone. It'll almost certainly depend on what background services you have running. By that, I mean GMail, Email, Twitter/Facebook updates, playing music. Also, some apps seem to handle multitasking pretty well. NFS Hot Pursuit was obviously coded to accommodate Android multitasking, as I can quit it, check my email/twitter, maybe browse a website, and when I go back to NFS, it's on the pause screen and I can pick up the race where I left off.

Different processes receive different priorities as far as Android memory management go. If you're playing music (in HTC Music, Play Music, PowerAmp, etc,) then Android recognizes that this app is actively doing something, even if you consecutively load up every other app on your phone. You can go back to the music app and it won't have to reload anything. That's just an example. Other apps can do this too, as long as the programmers coded it right. I'm guessing NFS Hot Pursuit does this as I've never had a problem with it.

Of course, none of that excuses the poor multitasking, since the gnex seems much better at it. (And I'm assuming you people who have tried both have been running virtually identical apps on each phone.)

I don't know a ton about memory management and multitasking in Android, so I could only speculate as to where the problem really lies. Could be that Sense takes up too much memory (surprise surprise!), could be that HTC made the memory management too agressive, could be weird other things that I don't even know about, such as some sort of time-out for background apps.

I'm going to do some playing around and let you know if I can find any ways to improve it easily.