App seems to randomly quit when it's in the background after a while?

[CrossFireXT17]

Hey everyone,

I use the program "glympse" to share my location when I'm traveling long distances with my family. I just run the app, set the interval for how long I want to share it, and then put my phone to sleep (While it's plugged into my car charger).

It seems though that recently (maybe with either the Sapphire ROM, or Froyo in general) that the app seems to quit randomly. Like I will wake up my phone and see the GPS is still sharing (as I see the GPS icon) in the notification bar. But then after a while, when I awaken my phone, the icon won't be there and the app will have closed.

I don't have any kind of task killer installed besides Advance Task Killer, and I already checked to make sure that the autokill feature was turned off.

Anyone have any ideas what could be causing this issue?

 

[heleos]

Have you tried not running advance task killer for a day and see if the problem still occurs?

 

[Tanknspank]

Froyo's memory management seems to be a little more strict than Eclair was for the Droid. My only question that could possibly resolve this is:

Does the app by chance have a settings where you can set it to appear in your notification bar?

This alone can make all the difference. If not, then you can TRY downloading minfree manager and making the task killer a little less aggressive. This could cause more problems than fixing it just one though, so be careful with even trying this. I hardly ever recommend a task killer or memory manager of any kind, but if this app is important to you, then if properly set up this could work just fine too.

Still, check the settings to see if you can put it in the notification bar. If not, try contacting the developer about adding this feature in. Could help out a lot.

Hope I helped!

 

[CrossFireXT17]

It unfortunately does not... It kind of looks like Google Maaps, but with a dot that moves around a map... Do you think it would be bad if I leave the app open with the screen on for 4 hours at a time?

 

[hookbill]

Have you tried not running advance task killer for a day and see if the problem still occurs?

No task killers. Not necessary.

 

[jimnutt]

It unfortunately does not... It kind of looks like Google Maaps, but with a dot that moves around a map... Do you think it would be bad if I leave the app open with the screen on for 4 hours at a time?

No, shouldn't be a problem. But it will most likely eat your battery alive. It sounds like the app isn't telling Android that it needs to work in the background, so Android just assumes it can safely kill it when it needs more memory. It something the app developer is going to have to fix, I'd send them a complaint. At the minimum it should be setting a timer or something that says, "Hey, wake me up every 10 (or whatever) minutes so I can get a location fix and pass it on." There are two basic kinds of tasks in Android, services that run in the background and foreground apps that are paused when in the background and may be killed. It sounds like glimpse should have a service but doesn't. Services aren't always running, they usually are waiting for notifications and are only activated when those notifications fire.

 

[tameone]

Definitely sounds like an app problem. The app isn't telling the OS it wants to be persistent, so the OS kills it to free up memory.

 

[wingdo]

Have you tried not running advance task killer for a day and see if the problem still occurs?

No task killers. Not necessary.

Hook's right. I have no task killers running. Honestly they just take up RAM you want other apps to have in the first place.

 

[ibebyi]

I hate to post semi off topic but I think task killers are useful when used properly/responsibly.

For instance I dont want Crush the Castle running after I exit the game. Nor do I want AIM running when I've signed off from it. So I kill it. I have a huge ignore/white list, but some poorly written apps tend to latch onto the RAM long after they've served their purpose.

EDIT: @wingdo, I typically have advanced task killer kill itself so it doesnt show up in the running apps list nor the running process list.