Multitasking/ Recent Apps still limited to 7 ?

[AkArora]

Hi,

I have installed 10166 build on Lumia 830, though the build is pretty smooth and the annoying "Resuming" screens which plagued WP 8.1 are gone completely, but the recent apps list is still limited to 7?

I have seen videos where Lumia 1520 renders app switch screen differently, but number of apps have been greater than 10. Would'nt it make sense to increase the number of recent apps and this shouldn't be biased to screen sizes? I feel this very limiting. Or is the situation different with other devices?

 

[sumeet shukla]

No, 7 is not the limit.

 

[AkArora]

Can you confirm on which phone? It should be a bug then?

 

[The Extreme G]

920 user here. The max I'm able to see is 7.
The 1520 has 2gb of ram so that could play a role in app management.

 

[Allen Brandt]

I just closed 9 apps (not counting the start screen) on my 640 running 10166, so even with the 1GB of memory, it's working well.

 

[EL620]

I tried running 6 - 7 apps with my 822, some were just sitting in the background for some time and still resumed almost instantly. Even during an active skype call.

 

[Rich215]

just closed out 14 with my Icon

 

[AkArora]

I just closed 9 apps (not counting the start screen) on my 640 running 10166, so even with the 1GB of memory, it's working well.

640 and 830 are basically the same chipset. So I assume that this is a bug.

 

[King Nickles Saintil]

My 930 i just closed out about 14/15

 

[colinkiama]

Oh noo, the multitasking I Worse in this build on my 735. Last time I had 12 apps open that all resumed quickly.

 

[jojoe42]

Interesting, my 1020 can keep 14 apps in the multitasking screen and all resume pretty quick now

 

[byobg]

Hi,

I have installed 10166 build on Lumia 830, though the build is pretty smooth and the annoying "Resuming" screens which plagued WP 8.1 are gone completely, but the recent apps list is still limited to 7?

I have seen videos where Lumia 1520 renders app switch screen differently, but number of apps have been greater than 10. Would'nt it make sense to increase the number of recent apps and this shouldn't be biased to screen sizes? I feel this very limiting. Or is the situation different with other devices?

On my Lumia 635 (512Mb RAM) running 10149, I'm absolutely limited to 7 "recent" apps - I launch an eighth, and the first one drops off.

It shouldn't have anything to do with screen size - I assume RAM would be the deciding factor, but the 830 has at least 1G, right?

I thought for sure that at some point in the W10 TP, I had more than 7 - so maybe this is still in flux?

 

[AkArora]

On my Lumia 635 (512Mb RAM) running 10149, I'm absolutely limited to 7 "recent" apps - I launch an eighth, and the first one drops off.

It shouldn't have anything to do with screen size - I assume RAM would be the deciding factor, but the 830 has at least 1G, right?

I thought for sure that at some point in the W10 TP, I had more than 7 - so maybe this is still in flux?

Yes, 830 has 1 GB. This is an inconsistency. I am going to report this in the Feedback app. The 8th app drops off. This gets annoying sometimes.

 

[byobg]

Yes, 830 has 1 GB. This is an inconsistency. I am going to report this in the Feedback app. The 8th app drops off. This gets annoying sometimes.

I was finally able to upgrade to 10166 yesterday and start playing around with this - it's weirder than I thought.

Weirdness 1: I'm positive that at some point last night I had 10+ apps (plus the Start screen) in my "recent" list - but today, when I started testing it a little more rigorously, it seemed consistently limited to 9. So OK, maybe I miscounted last night, whatever.

Weirdness 2: The right-most apps on my list were Edge and Groove, so those should have been the first to drop off as I launched new apps - but they didn't drop off, ever. The app to the left of them dropped off. Maybe some apps get privileged in the recent-list-maintaining algorithm? (Or maybe apps that are allowed to run in the background don't fall off the list - that seems reasonable too.) (Nope, that wasn't it - People, Store, Facebook, Outlook, and Here Drive+ are all allowed to run in the background, but they all fell off the "recent" list while Groove and Edge didn't.)

Weirdness 3: Hey, I just added a tenth app and nothing dropped off, unlike the past 20 times I did that - so it's NOT hard-coded to 9, I guess. (Maybe the limit isn't the number of apps, but rather the amount of RAM the system will dedicate to saving the state of suspended apps? That would make sense - what state to save is up to the developer, and there are very different implications to the system between suspending 7 apps that want to save a HUGE amount vs 7 apps that only want to save a few bytes - so limiting total resource allocation is the most efficient way to do it. (At the expense of predictable behavior, unfortunately, because the user has no concept of whether given app saves a LOT of state or just a little...) (NOTE: These are all just wild-*** guesses and assumptions based on zero knowledge, but I'd bet a few Internet Dollars I'm not too far off.)



So not only is the behavior different from 8.1, it's different in different situations on the same day with the same device. I think the silver lining here is that there's likely only a tiny number of WP users who had a good handle on how the OLD task-switcher worked, so they won't be affected by apparent inconsistencies, the same way I don't notice typos in Chinese.

 

[byobg]

Aaaaand of course, this weird behavior is completely non-reproducible now, and I'm back to (apparently) a max of seven slots in my "recent" list; and both Edge and Groove Music fall off the end of the list the way they're supposed to.

I think the only reliable conclusion that I can draw here is that there's no reliable conclusion I can draw.

 

[a5cent]

You're looking for a simple answer to a complicated question. Too simple...

There is no longer a predetermined number of apps that WP can retain in memory. How much memory our devices have is obviously the most important factor, but WP8.1 apps running on WP8.1 or higher will have their memory usage monitored/profiled. If you open many apps that (based on memory profiling) aren't expected to use a lot of RAM, then the OS will retain more of them in memory.

On a 1GB device you should be able to get around 7, but depending on which apps/games you launch, the OS could retain considerably more or less.

This is not a bug, and screen size has absolutely nothing to do with it.

 

[a5cent]

Weirdness 2: The right-most apps on my list were Edge and Groove, so those should have been the first to drop off as I launched new apps - but they didn't drop off, ever.

I don't understand how WP decides which app to drop, but I do know it's more complicated than just dropping the app that was least recently used. For example, how much memory an app uses also factors into it. Developers can get their app to be dropped less frequently, if they require only very little RAM.
That's not the whole story either though.

 

[AkArora]

I think the only reliable conclusion that I can draw here is that there's no reliable conclusion I can draw.

There are some interesting points you bring out in your non-conclusion. I also tried to reproduce this behavior, and could get a maximum of 11 apps open at one time on 1 GB Lumia 830, and after 11, random applications kept dropping, and once I reduced the number of apps to 7 by manually clearing off 4 apps, the number of recent apps wouldn't increase and was limited to 7.

I don't understand how WP decides which app to drop, but I do know it's more complicated than just dropping the app that was least recently used.

I would rather have them explain to users what they are considering best as a user experience rather than considering that end user wont just care. There maybe RAM managment side of this, but apps being limited to 11 and then 7 after clearing 4 apps does not validate this too, now I am way more curious to what is happening at the back end.

 

[a5cent]

I would rather have them explain to users what they are considering best.

I can't speak for MS, but I'm pretty sure what they would say. These are the rules they are going by:

a) MS attempts to keep as many apps in memory as possible
b) MS attempts to drop as few apps from memory as possible, and hopes you won't notice when they do
c) MS reserves the right to change their methods at any time without notice, so as to improve adherence to rules (a) and (b)

Because their methods can change at any time, there is no point to explaining it in detail. It's not that there "may be a RAM management side to this"! That is pretty much the only side to this there is! It terms of users experience, it would be best to never unload an app from memory... ever. That's just technically not feasible, so rules (a) - (c) represent the compromise.

 

[AkArora]

t's not that there "may be a RAM management side to this"! That is pretty much the only side to this there is!

That does not seem plausible from the current behavior. Once you try it yourself you will feel the weirdness of it.