Curb "killing background" to get mobile phone manufacturers, Google has seized the key
Android 14, which is currently in the testing phase, has new news that has attracted attention from the outside world, but this time it is not a feature update, but a new plan. Recently, it has been reported that Samsung and Google have reached a cooperation, will fix the "front office service and background work" incoordination problem in Android 14, so as to reduce the frequency of "killing background" in OneUI 6.0.
To address these conformance challenges, Google said it will build deeper partnerships with Android hardware manufacturers to help ensure predictable and consistent support for the apis used for back-office work across the ecosystem. Samsung will be the first partner to join the program, and future apps running on OneUI 6.0 will be able to ensure that the front desk services work as intended, as long as they are developed according to Android's new front desk Services API policy.
In short, the cooperation between Google and Samsung aims to solve the phenomenon of "killing the background" of Android models. That's right, from Android 11 to the upcoming Android 14, the governance of "killing the background" has actually not been completed. The cooperation between Google and Samsung, in a sense, also represents the failure of Google's previous attempts to use technical means to solve this problem.
Why would you say that? In fact, this starts with the reason for the birth of the phenomenon of "killing the background".
In the Android ecosystem, apps wake up to each other and forcibly reside in the background is undoubtedly a big cancer, which is also one of the triggers for the memory of Android models than the iPhone. Today, Android uses the "true background" mechanism, which is designed to make full use of physical memory, and read the data needed from flash memory to memory, and then use the higher speed of memory to ensure the access performance of system data, the smaller the available memory, the higher the utilization rate of memory, the more data in the cache, the higher the hit rate of data access. The faster the system will run.
In order to make full use of the system's Memory, Android designs a memory recycling mechanism named Low Memory Killer. That is, when the system finds that the memory is lower than the warning line, it evaluates the importance of the process and decides to close the process to release the memory to ensure the fluency of the system. But the problem is that applications are often surprising in order to "stay alive", will use chain wake, random caching, forced self-start and other ways to take root in the background, and let this memory recovery mechanism fail. So that's why, at that time, the iPhone with only 2 gigabytes of memory was smoother than the Android flagship with 6 gigabytes of memory, and the more Android was used, the more it was stuck.
In order to curb this problem, major mobile phone manufacturers have used what can be described as a more "abnormal" strategy in their own ROM, and have used an almost universal way to completely shut down a large number of applications residing in the background, which in turn has made developers complain. Even mobile phone manufacturers such "kill the background" strategy makes Google can not sit still, before the summer of 2021, in the face of developers for mobile phone manufacturers customized system frequently "kill the background" problem, Google launched a third-party customized system "kill the background" investigation.
A year later, at the I/O Developer Conference 2022, support for MGLRU (multi-page Recycling strategy) was added to the AOSP source code for Android 13, with this strategy also reducing background kill cases by 85% at 75% memory usage. Google, however, was cautious about the effectiveness of MGLRU and said it was still trying to solve the problem from multiple angles. However, unfortunately, the final effect is not satisfactory, and the phenomenon of "killing the background" has continued unabated in recent years.
Although Google is trying hard, the reason why mobile phone manufacturers do not buy it is actually very simple, because the interests of the two sides have diverged. Due to the relatively small screen of the phone, the user will only use a limited number of applications at a time, and the characteristics of the Android system determines that the fewer applications in the background, the more resources left for the foreground application, the more smooth the use. However, the strategy of "killing the background" of mobile phone manufacturers, although it will make the user experience better, completely ignores the interests of developers.
Why should the APP do everything possible to reside in the background of the Android system, is undoubtedly the developer in order to "keep alive", in order to ensure that the APP can push information to users at any time, so frequent "kill the background" will make developers very uncomfortable.
Back then, Apple went to the completely closed model of solving everything on its own, and relied on Jobs's super ability as a product manager to bring the iPhone to the altar. Google's Android is an open route, and the open mobile phone alliance is used to win Allies, and the means of benevolence and application are used to make a big cake. As a result, developers are an important force in the Android community, and Google needs to keep courting them.
But mobile phone manufacturers do not need to be responsible for developers, only to win users, and there is a white list mechanism, such as wechat, Taobao, Douyin and other real stakeholders, have been protected. But Google does not directly face users, but needs to appease developers, so the difference in interests has also created in the "kill background" on the matter, mobile phone manufacturers and Google can only talk themselves. Android has never mandated that third-party custom ROMs must copy Google's code.
This is the reason why Android 13 has not been able to solve the problem of "killing the background", although the design of MGLRU is indeed excellent, but the mobile phone manufacturers do not buy the case, Google this policy can not be implemented. So what went wrong? In fact, there is no trust between mobile phone manufacturers and developers.
Due to historical reasons, the wanton behavior of some developers has indeed objectively led to the emergence of "killing the background", and also makes mobile phone manufacturers dare not believe developers. After all, in the current environment that smart phones have entered the stock market, mobile phone manufacturers are not allowed to be lenient, in case there are developers "old tricks", so that the user experience decline, the loss can be large.
Therefore, Google is now pulling Samsung, is to give other mobile phone manufacturers to do a demonstration, if you can really make the API for background work to achieve predictable and consistent support, then the trust between mobile phone manufacturers and developers is possible to rebuild, "kill the background" phenomenon can be fundamentally solved. Otherwise, Google simply from the technical level to do more optimization, may also be useless.
