Android Application Life Cycle

Android Application Life Cycle

The Android application life cycle is unique in that the system controls much of the life cycle of the application. All Android applications, or Activities, are run within their own process. All of the running processes are watched by Android and, depending on how the activity is running (this is, a foreground activity, background activity, and so forth), Android may choose to end the activity to reclaim needed resources.

Some of the specific methods called during the life cycle of an android activity are

• onCreate
• onStart
• Process-specific events (for example: launching activities or accessing a database)
• onStop
• onDestroy

Following the same logic as other application life cycles, an Android application is created, the processes are started, events are fired, processes are stopped, and the application is destroyed. Though there are a few differences, many application developers

should be comfortable with the steps in the life cycle.