I lost a draft post in Voyager on Android while I was a few apps away doing research and looking for a photo to add to the post.

That brought to me an understanding that Android will just kill apps for memory purposes.

Then I thought back to Windows 98 and how it had a page file that would write RAM information to the hard disk and use it as RAM. It was slow af, but it worked.

So I’m wondering: it’s 2026; why is Android just killing apps instead of writing them to a much faster drive for recall when needed?

  • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
    11·
    17 hours ago

    This is it, and it’s arguably a much better model. Apps are able to manage their own persistent storage, and you can always be sure that your RAM is actually RAM (and not deal with the speed and timing issues that result in you “RAM” actually being flash memory).

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
      3·
      13 hours ago

      Problem is that it’s not at all trivial to implement, so it often isn’t implemented.

      • owenfromcanada@lemmy.ca
        1·
        12 hours ago

        That’s true. But it’s also not trivial to implement an app that may have its “RAM” located on disk. It’s a complex problem with multiple solutions, and giving apps the freedom to do what they want with it is the way Android structured things.