Slow home screen recover when closing certain applications.

F

FunFungirl

New member
Hi,

One thing I've noticed is that when when closing certain applications the home screen takes some time to recover. What I mean by recover is that the home screen initially only shows the background and a few icons, but no widgets, status bar and drawer. These items takes a while to come back on the screen. This doesn't happen with all applications, but when closing some (like Skyfire) it always happens. With most applications the home screen is there instantly, so I was wondering why some seems to slow down the home screen like that. Ideas anyone?

I'm running Android 1.6 with ADW.launcher (but the same thing happens with other launcher including the built in Android one).
 
When Android gets low on memory, it'll start closing applications that are in the background - including the Home app. So all this means is that you're low on memory and the Home app has been closed. It'll take a while to reload itself and everything on the home screen.
 
Thanks! The home app should be excluded from being closed unless one app needs all available memory. That's an idea for an app in itself: a home app protector. Maybe it already exists?
 
Some custom ROMs like Cyanogen MOD have an option to keep the Home app in memory. But then such custom ROMs release more memory on most phones anyway so you can afford it.

The Home app uses a LOT of memory. Remember, it's not just the Home screen, but every icon on all of your home screens, every widget (which could be using 5MB each), a cache of all of your apps and icons. It is also something that can easily be reloaded, and isn't needed to be running in the background for stuff to keep working. As such, there's a strong counter-argument that the Home app is the first thing you'd want to kill off if you need memory as it's not critical and uses lots of memory. Unfortunately, while it's a non-critical app you don't use for a large amount of time, it's probably the app that's most frequently used, and slow to reload.

The alternative is killing off services (there are also running apps, but by the time Android is killing off the Home app all running apps have already been killed off if they're not services). But this is where things happen like you stop receiving SMS messages, gmails, emails, etc, so it's not a good idea unless it's critical.
 
It's been a long time since I've been flashing phones. I was doing that with Motorola phones (P2K) back in the day. I was hoping not having to, but now I'm tempted. Thank you for your thorough answer!
 
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