Originally Posted by gomezz:
“How many tasks can Android cope with keeping open? Ten? Hundred? Thousand? What does it do if it hits a resource limit because of the number of open tasks?”
From the Android Wikipedia page:
Quote:
“Since Android devices are usually battery-powered, Android is designed to manage memory (RAM) to keep power consumption at a minimum, in contrast to desktop operating systems which generally assume they are connected to unlimited mains electricity. When an Android app is no longer in use, the system will automatically suspend it in memory – while the app is still technically "open," suspended apps consume no resources (e.g. battery power or processing power) and sit idly in the background until needed again. This has the dual benefit of increasing the general responsiveness of Android devices, since apps don't need to be closed and reopened from scratch each time, but also ensuring background apps don't consume power needlessly.[65]
Android manages the apps stored in memory automatically: when memory is low, the system will begin killing apps and processes that have been inactive for a while, in reverse order since they were last used (i.e. oldest first). This process is designed to be invisible to the user, such that users do not need to manage memory or the killing of apps themselves.[66] However, confusion over Android memory management has resulted in third-party task killers becoming popular on the Google Play store; these third-party task killers are generally regarded as doing more harm than good.”
So the more RAM you've got, the more apps Android will keep suspended in memory but it'll sort things out if RAM gets too low. This activity has been refined as Android has evolved and RAM is more plentiful in many modern handsets so it should be less of an issue these days.