I lost a draft post in Voyager on Android while I was a few apps away doing research and looking for a photo to add to the post.

That brought to me an understanding that Android will just kill apps for memory purposes.

Then I thought back to Windows 98 and how it had a page file that would write RAM information to the hard disk and use it as RAM. It was slow af, but it worked.

So I’m wondering: it’s 2026; why is Android just killing apps instead of writing them to a much faster drive for recall when needed?

  • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksOP
    2·
    4 days ago

    Why does it necessarily have an impact on battery life? Can it just be dumped into memory and frozen there as a snap shot? It doesn’t need to be running.

    • sniggleboots@europe.pub
      2·
      4 days ago

      I’m not a computer scientist, but doesn’t keeping RAM engaged cost energy? You can’t turn off your computer and expect the RAM to be unaffected like a hard drive is

      • JelleWho@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 day ago

        Indeed, RAM is a memory latch by use of a capacitor. And on an interval it replenishes the charge of this capacitor . Thus when there is no power it will lose all its data.

        These days it is possible (and Android has/does this) to just write old programs from RAM memory to the SSD, this is a slow process back and forth. But it saves RAM space and power.

      • schipelblorp@sh.itjust.worksOP
        11·
        4 days ago

        I think it costs electricity to flip bits, but unless things are moving, there’s not much going on. If the app isn’t actively being used, I was wondewring why it couldn’t just get frozen in carbonite and dumped into storage until the user needed it again.