View Single Post
Posts: 702 | Thanked: 2,059 times | Joined on Feb 2011 @ UK
#37
Originally Posted by wicket View Post
This is not true. If a process is idling in memory, it will not consume any additional power unless it is swapped out. Saving and restoring state requires copying data from RAM to non-volatile storage and back again. This action is similar to swapping and does consume extra power. When Android restarts an app from scratch and restores its state, it's quite likely that it uses more power due to extra instruction cycles and copy operations than swapping normally would.
It is true.

Android first saves state IN RAM. IE. It just leaves an instance of the running app IN RAM. If it then runs out of RAM, it offloads that instance to storage.

Yes, it may use more instructions to restore state than to restore a swapped out process but you are getting the inbuilt protection of not having an app lose all its transient unsaved data.

Anyway, nobody wants their device to be continuously swapping. Nobody would argue that they'd rather have swapping for performance reasons.
 

The Following 2 Users Say Thank You to aegis For This Useful Post: