If ever there was an excuse to switch to a E/os or another legacy android custom ROM like Lineage OS.

Because with only 4GB of RAM you’re not going to get the performance you want because the operating system for newer phones takes up so much of that RAM usage.

What you’re doing right now seems like you’re attempting to push your hardware beyond it’s limitations to run software that your phone isn’t specced for.

Google generally gets around this by providing a lighter weight version of their OS for bottom tier specced phones with Android GO, and budget phones were a lot of the reason they tried this.

It’s either that or, you have settings configured in such a way that when you close certain apps they aren’t persistent in memory (which makes sense with a budget phone or a low specced phone) and honestly that could also be Google’s fault because of default settings and their propensity for memory leaks.

I would argue that it’s not every iteration of android, but I get your point. I don’t think you were looking for solutions, but just in case, my comment is here.

Sorry to hear that

This wouldn’t have occurred to you if you used Summit for Lemmy.

Using a card on a web site. Verified by Visa web page: “we have emailed you the code”. So I go to the email app and get the code. Switch back to the web page. Web page: “what? Who the fuck are you?”

I’ve got 4 GB of RAM and multiple CPU cores. That should be enough to run a dozen apps in parallel.

In which world is 4GB enough to multitask a web browser under any OS?

Your phone. Not my phone, so it doesn’t seem like an android problem.

Or possibly the apps you are using? I don’t think I have ever had this problem.

But that said: I would love to replace it all with a true Linux phone.

I’m increasingly trying to use my (GNU/Linux) laptop where I can, and just tether the phone to it when I need mobile data connectivity.

It’s not a complete drop-in solution. You can’t just use a laptop with one hand while waiting in a line (well, there used to be palmtops, but those seem to be a mostly-dead class of PCs today). It consumes more power. Desktop OS software doesn’t really natively have a concept of “being on WiFi versus being on mobile data”, which is nice to have in phone software.

But where you can sit down and use one…man, it eliminates a ton of my irritations with phones. The locked-down stuff in most phone OSes. Those fiddly, limited onscreen keyboards. The tradeoffs that the systems make to try to minimize power use and simplify memory management from an end user standpoint (because a lot of users don’t get the concept of closing programs) like the one you mention go away. Hardware is more capable and expandable, and the manufacturers have way more physical space to work with, so you don’t have manufacturers throwing out things like physical headphones jacks to try to get a bit more space. The limited cooling on phones goes away. Better in terms of repairability — I just replaced a laptop battery. If my phone’s battery died, I’d throw out the phone. Using multiple programs at once, as you were doing, is much better; phone OSes just aren’t really optimal for that.

I’m honestly impressed with what smartphone vendors have done within the constraints of what they have to work with, especially in how much better touchscreens have gotten over the decades — they used to be far, far worse. But they still just face a ton of limitations imposed by the form factor.

Honestly, the state of mobile OSs is quite sad. Everything is locked down, it’s a duopoly of shit and shittier, and the Linux alternative just isn’t daily driver worthy for the vast majority of users. And that’s not because the development isn’t going well - it’s because phones have so much more proprietary shit that needs drivers, and that’s if you can even unlock the bootloader in the first place, otherwise you’re SOL.

I’ve got 4 GB of RAM

Sadly that’s an almost unusable amount these days. The OS will use half of that just sitting idle, and Google Play Services will use a fifth of the remainder (you can enable Developer Mode and view running services to see this yourself). 4 gigs is solidly in the “only one or two apps open at a time” range.

(It doesn’t help that every Android app includes its own separate copies of all its libraries and dependencies for compatibility reasons. There’s no such thing as a lightweight app without going out of your way to avoid the normal development ecosystem)

Android also doesn’t use swap (storing unused/rarely accessed memory contents on the disk for later), instead shifting stale memory pages to a compressed block in RAM (zram), so once it starts filling up with cached background apps it has to start killing apps or the system will hang. The less RAM you have, the sooner this will happen, and both Lemmy clients and web browsers use a ton of RAM.

Funny, I switched to Android because iOS was doing shit like this.

I feel like this might be the wrong community for this

Although I am mildly infuriated that you hate Android

Nah. Thats just because the world decided your opinion was shit and didnt need to be shared. Yet here you are sharing it anyway.

Mishandling an OOM killer event is generally speaking developer error.

I don’t love Android either and would be much happier back on iOS but with everything happening to tech I’ll use Graphene until the seas look a bit smoother

Yes it’s a very stupid memory management meant to improve battery life by killing any app thats been running at all…

Very frustrating and idiot.

Try play any game nowadays… The instant you switch away bam, killed.

It’s baked into android. AOSP I mean, any and all android flavours.

Disabling optimization for battery doesn’t help with any bigger app.