All background apps get routinely killed

[chris47368]

Hi everyone ,

So i have been using my shiftphone6mq for some months now. I problem that has been really bugging me however (since around the time i had the phone) is that all background apps seem to be routinely killed by the system all at once - regardless if battery optimizations are set or not for the apps.

It seems that apps that are in the immediate foreground do not get killed when this happens, but if I lock the screen then that most recent foreground app also dies. This has been especially annoying when listening to music only for the song to be abruptly cut off due to the app being killed, if I have a keepass database open in the background...ect.

This issue tends to reduce in frequency for a bit if I restart my phone.

Is this a known bug in ShiftOS 3.8G or is this unique to my device?

I do have my phone rooted via magisk - but nothing I have installed with root access should do this (nor has done this with my other devices).

Thanks for your help!

 

[chris47368]

I should also add that unfortunately I do not have any way for consistently replicating this problem other than just waiting for this issue to occur...

 

[danielp]

Don't think this is a known bug else there would be more reports like this maybe some application is hogging memory and thus background apps get killed. Did you check the memory usage? It is available under the developer options.
Also maybe the memory itself is faulty!?

 

[gmachl]

I have the same problem, it even happens while talking to someone on Whatsapp. The weird thing is, I have the phone for nearly 2 years now, but the problem only started to occur in October, so pretty late after the last update. My memory says it is working normally and i still have 3 Gb left.

 

[@Lhotze]

Did you check the Background Process Limit in Development options? If it's set to low, all background apps will be force closed.

Greetz

 

[chris47368]

Did you check the Background Process Limit in Development options? If it's set to low, all background apps will be force closed.

Greetz

Hi there! I did check through every development setting - including that one and everything seems to be set to the normal default...

 

[chris47368]

Don't think this is a known bug else there would be more reports like this maybe some application is hogging memory and thus background apps get killed. Did you check the memory usage? It is available under the developer options.
Also maybe the memory itself is faulty!?

I do have a memory usage monitor - on average 60-80% of my RAM is used up, it very rarely gets above 85% - so my phone killing apps(regardless if optimised) due to low memory would not really make sense

I do perhaps notice however that when ever the apps are killed my power usage suddenly jumps up from the 300-400mA usage to around 1000mA(i have a power monitor widget)...so that could suggest that the CPU is being used alot during that issue

And I would not think it was an actual memory issue as my phone has actually been running next to rock solid in terms of stability, aside from this issue.... besides I would really hate to have to send my phone back to Germany unless necessary as I am in the UK and I had to get my Dutch friend to ship this phone to me(brexit issues - more or less, LOL)

 

[chris47368]

I have the same problem, it even happens while talking to someone on Whatsapp. The weird thing is, I have the phone for nearly 2 years now, but the problem only started to occur in October, so pretty late after the last update. My memory says it is working normally and i still have 3 Gb left.

Nice to know I am not alone in having a somewhat similar issue then! This further my confidence that it indeed is a software bug...

 

[danielp]

Yes, two is already a majority.
Maybe you are using the same "faulty" Apps?
In the developer options (or your preferred app), it lists which apps have used how much memory up to the last 24 hours. Maybe there is something noticeable there. Except the system for me the app with the largest memory consumption is at about 350 Mb for K9-Mail.
Edit: Sorry, forgot to sort by highest memory usage. So it actually is 1.7 Gb for Firefox. Before the value was for the average consumption.

Not saying it isn't a software bug but there could be other reasons and additionally you run a lot of software on your phone which has nothing to do with the OS.

There are also Apps which have the permission to kill background processes.

 

[chris47368]

Yes, two is already a majority.
Maybe you are using the same "faulty" Apps?
In the developer options (or your preferred app), it lists which apps have used how much memory up to the last 24 hours. Maybe there is something noticeable there. Except the system for me the app with the largest memory consumption is at about 350 Mb for K9-Mail.
Edit: Sorry, forgot to sort by highest memory usage. So it actually is 1.7 Gb for Firefox. Before the value was for the average consumption.

Not saying it isn't a software bug but there could be other reasons and additionally you run a lot of software on your phone which has nothing to do with the OS.

There are also Apps which have the permission to kill background processes.

Here is a screenshot of the apps I have running sorted by memory use - even the apps that have the least memory use(10's of MB with battery optimisation off) also get killed.

I have pretty much the same set of apps on my phone as my Fairphone 3+(previous phone) and I did not run into this issue I have now with the shiftphone

Thanks for your help btw!

 

[danielp]

Looks similar to mine.
I also have many background processes and none of them gets killed. This also includes a keypass database.
I however have to mention that I am running ShiftOS-L which comes without Google services. Maybe there is an issue with them. Check manually if there are updates for them. Sometimes they are not automatically installed. Another idea might be clearing the data of the Google Play Services. It is one of the Google Apps with the most and highest privileges.