Comments on: EDITED Real World Ramblings Of The ‘Improved’ Multitasking Android Runtime On Jolla EDITED

By: Real World Ramblings Of The ‘Improved’ Multitasking Android Runtime On Jolla | Jolla Phones & SailFish OS

Wed, 22 Oct 2014 13:04:07 +0000

[…] For a while now I have been using the new android runtime system (since July’s Tahkalampi update) on my Jolla which allows for separate multitasking panes or cards to be handled individually on… Read More → […]

By: Saimen

Saimen — Wed, 15 Oct 2014 20:13:08 +0000

The new multitasking was a real improvement!
We are short before 9th update. Is this article a preview what is coming? So the author will prepare us for the downgrade, because he knows some internals?
Going back to old version will be one more disapointment for me, under the many lacks sailfish still have. They should fix them instead of programming around on good things!

By: manut

manut — Tue, 14 Oct 2014 17:09:00 +0000

To be able to run both Sailfish and android apps simultaneously a Jolla device should have at least have twice as much RAM as a typical Android device and hence urgently needs to be able to run on 64-bits cpu’s. Perhaps a 64-bit Jolla host “emulating” a 32-bits Android guest.

Hmmm… it seems the Blackberry folks have had this better worked out. Though I reckon the problem remains there as well.

Anyway the problem is that Android’s development won’t stop either. By this time next year Android devices with more than 4GB RAM and 64-bits multi-core cpu’s will be more common than both Jolla and/or BB-devices. Eventually Android will be the Windows on mobile devices and Google will replace Microsoft as the no.1 software developer. I really doubt that Sailfish OS can counteract this.

Unless the folks at Jolla have this foreseen and were secretly working on a bomb. The perfect and most powerful 64-bit SailFish OS that blows everything out o/t water.

In that case the Jolla 2 phone will be something like…
– 6,5″ QHD IPS ulta-triliminous screen, gorilla glass 4 layer
– octa core ARM A64 BIG-BIG architecture
– 8GB Dual channel GDDR6 memory (used for both GFX and system RAM)
– 128GB SSD internal micro SSD drive
– micro-SD card slot fully UHS-1 compliant
– micro USB3.0 universal reversal plug
– USB OTG
– bluetooth 5.0 ULP
– Wifi A/C + WiDI + DLNA
– Smart IRdA
– NFC2
– FM radio + DAB radio
– full range Quad speakers with true surround + Dolby technologies Virtual octa-sound.
– LTE cat6 with VoiLTE conference call (min. 8 users)
– complete button-free operation.
– inductive- and magnetic charging
– 41MP Toshiba sensor with Zeis optics (5MP, 8MP, 12MP and 16MP pureview modes)
– 2x PV-zoom, 4x digital Zoom with “superior auto” oversampling
– NASA approved space-age titanium alloy outer shell with nano-tech watercoating and silicon shock resistant inner lining. Both high altitude, low oxygen and submerged operation upto 5 meters and minus 30 degrees Celsius. Still not upto Siberia level but hey, it’s a phone right!
– battery charged in 30 minutes and last for 5 days 24h/day heavy duty operation.

And of course delivered in a hand carved wooden box with at least 4 smart-covers and a signed thank-you letter from Marc Dillon. With free hologram sticker containing the Jolla logo for “the first ones”

Than we’re talking :-)

By: ossi1967

ossi1967 — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 12:54:44 +0000

Are you sure that the way Android applications behave in terms of multitasking changed at all? It was my understanding from the information given about this change that only the presentation of the application windows changed, nothing else. This is also in line with my obserations about what happens when I push them into the background: pending operations do not continue, there’s no live update to the cover (which seems to be a screenshot only) and no CPU usage. The only thing that’s not released (at least not until needed) seems to be RAM, but I don’t remember the way it was before… And I have yet to run into a situation when I run out of RAM. (Tried with quite a few Sailfish and Android apps open, never exceeded 80%)

By: JollaTides

JollaTides — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 10:06:50 +0000

After further consideration, maybe my slight ‘lag’ issue is related to high internal storage usage? I have use almost 11gb of 13.7gb available. I’m going to try and run some optimisations as suggested in this thread: http://www.jollatides.com/forums/discussion/178/phone-memory-filling-up-and-apps-crashing-solution

By: Larswad

Larswad — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 08:59:23 +0000

To be even more specific after reading a little: An android process is typically working under the UI-thread, relying on that threads responsiveness and ability to run. When backgrounded an application is given then chance to save it’s state, it is called in the onPause() method to do that work. Once restored it is able to restore that state using onResume(). That’s fine, that’s not real multitasking on that real sense, but it has the ability to construct a sort of background job / service, and the most common way is to use the IntentService in which the app. can perform critical tasks that must remain even when it is backgrounded. Still, not true multitasking but rather a workaround to the whole Android principle. Why can’t Jolla do the same even with the several cards principle. If app is switch, let it swap out complete from memory (and save state of course), let the new app run. But keep the LAST app in memory, if it is resumed let it run as it was. Only if a different app is chosen, then do the whole swap-out swap-in shebang. Wouldn’t that work?

By: Larswad

Larswad — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 08:49:01 +0000

Besides, correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it so in Android that apps are only kept “alive” and working in background only if they themselves utilize a demonizing process or thread that takes care of that job. Otherwise they are truly backgrounded, frozen, even if they are allowed to keep their freezed state (e.g. not restarted completely when resumed). The state I assume is like swapping them out of memory out to secondary storage and then back in again when resumed.

By: Istvan Prosinger

Istvan Prosinger — Sat, 11 Oct 2014 19:59:06 +0000

Why not just an option to suspend an app that you don’t need to be active in the background? Could even work generally – both for Android and native apps

By: Lloyd

Lloyd — Sat, 11 Oct 2014 05:24:37 +0000

Thats the reason Im holding back to buying my Jolla phone. I would have thought it would come with at least 2GB RAM. Like my Z10. Android apps run fine on it even if I leave it in the background. I know its too late now but I hope Jolla 2 will have at least 3GB RAM to keep up with Android Apps. Now I know that Sailfish is very frugal when it comes to RAM consumption but Android is not.

By: JollaTides

JollaTides — Fri, 10 Oct 2014 21:35:04 +0000

“Android only shuts stuff down if you run out of RAM.” This is what I was getting to and maybe wasn’t too clear in the article. Whichever way you look at it, the original system i believe managed the system memory better, however the new system has no upper limit cap and therefore when resources (RAM) are overstretched Sailfish starts to act strange ie. laggy, random freezing etc.

The old (tried and tested) system, negated this by never allowing you to push beyond the boundaries of possibility, keeping Sailfish largely stable.

Comments on: **EDITED** Real World Ramblings Of The ‘Improved’ Multitasking Android Runtime On Jolla **EDITED**

By: Real World Ramblings Of The ‘Improved’ Multitasking Android Runtime On Jolla | Jolla Phones & SailFish OS

By: Saimen

By: manut

By: ossi1967

By: JollaTides

By: Larswad

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By: Istvan Prosinger

By: Lloyd

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Comments on: EDITED Real World Ramblings Of The ‘Improved’ Multitasking Android Runtime On Jolla EDITED