Memory from activities not released

问题:

I've an application that has some foreground activities and also a service that updates some widgets. The problem is that, as the process remains for the service, the memory from the other activities ,if they are opened, is never reclaimed.

Looking at that response from Roman Guy it seems that can be normal. But it is? For how much time android keeps the resources of not used activities? They can live for hours?

How can I know easily if the activities are leaked or are simple not reclaimed? I've tried with a program from AndroidMarket (FreeMemoryRecover) and it's cleared but I suspect that it kills the process and then restart the service...

Any help or suggestion will be heavily appreciated.

Note 1: I've investigated with a HeapDump + Eclipse MAT and I don't see strange references holding my activities

Note 2: I've already asked some questions about this problem:

• Post 1
• Post 2

回答1:

The ability for Android to have multiple Activities, in different states, is a design principle as it allows users to quickly switch between activities without consciously having to shutdown whatever they were doing before. They can then quickly return to a previous activity.

If Android needs to pause an Activity, and quickly unpause it, it's going to need to keep the Activity's resources available to it.

If the memory is part of a terminated Activity, then it's leaked (very unlikely as the Linux kernel will reclaim all memory that was used when the process terminates), else it's either being actively used or is potentially about to be used.

What is that concerns you about this memory?

回答2:

I would try the following :

Launch your app play with it to be sure it is fully loaded and use as much memory as it can.

Then hit the home button and launch the navigator, open techcrunch.com, lemonde.fr, youtube.com, dailymotion.com, launch a video from youtube, open up and play angry bird and last but not least open up a pdf document.

After that Android will have needed the memory back quite for sure. If your app is still there, you might have a problem, if its not, then everything went smoothly.

By the way, good on you to put so much concern in being a good citizen in AndroidLand !!

回答3:

1. See my comment below your question.

2. See Romain Guy's post about Android memory leaks.

3. Specifically, look at the comment on the solution in the Launcher app. (look at unbindDrawables code here)

4. Use Context.getApplicationContext() whenever possible instead of your activity's context.