I can finish a web page in Android 15!

By Robert Ellison.

I have occasionally been critical of Android, so I'm delighted to have something positive to report. For even fairly long articles I can now read the whole thing!

Over the last few updates my phone has become almost useless for reading. I'm probably an edge case in the TikTok era, but reading is important to me. Android has got progressively more psychotic about preserving battery life with Adaptive Battery and the war on background services and numerous other 'enhancements'. If I take my attention away from what I'm reading for a split second Android kills the process, plows salt into the memory it once occupied, and emails the developer to request an environmental impact statement.

In theory none of this should be a problem because Android has an activity lifecycle that tells the app it's going to be hung, drawn and quartered. The app can then save the current state and restore it when the user comes back to the app. Of course many developers can't be bothered with implementing this properly and Google seems to set a very bad example here. Chrome - back to the top of the article for you! Google news - full reload of a fresh slate of stories so the one you were reading isn't even in the list any more.

Android 15 blissfully fixes this and has done more than exercise, diet or beta blockers for my blood pressure.

I hope it's not a regression...

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(Published to the Fediverse as: I can finish a web page in Android 15! #etc #google #android Android 15 finally fixes background process killing, making it easier to finish reading long articles without frustration. )

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