Android Programming: The Big Nerd Ranch Guide, Third Edition

For the More Curious: Processes vs Tasks

All objects need memory and a virtual machine to live in. A process is a place created by the OS for your application’s objects to live in and for your application to run.

Processes may own resources managed by the OS, like memory, network sockets, and open files. Processes also have at least one, possibly many, threads of execution. On Android, your process will also always have exactly one virtual machine running.

While there are some obscure exceptions, in general every application component in Android is associated with exactly one process. Your application is created with its own process, and this is the default process for all components in your application.

(You can assign individual ...