Android 9 Development Cookbook - Third Edition

Saving an activity's state

The mobile environment is very dynamic, with users changing tasks much more often than on desktops. With generally fewer resources on a mobile device, it should be expected that your application will be interrupted at some point. It's also very possible that the system will shut down your app completely to give additional resources to the task at hand. It's the nature of mobiles.

A user might start typing something in your app, be interrupted by a phone call, or switch over to send a text message, and by the time they get back to your app, the OS may have closed your app completely to free up the memory. To provide the best user experience, you need to expect such behavior and make it easier for your user to resume ...