Android system stops application when launching Media Intent

Question

I am launching a media intent to take a photo. After the user took a picture and gets back to the previous activity the whole application has restarted.

As this doesn't happen all the time, I think my application goes to the background and android kills it when the device has low memory.

Is there any way to keep my application from going to the background?

Thanks!

you can't stop your application from going to background but you can probably make it save it's state and restore that — zapl, Apr 16 '12 at 14:58
If you want to take a photo, your app has to go to the background..behind the camera app.. — Ron, Apr 22 '12 at 06:36
May be there's something after the camera launch code thats causing the problem. — Ron, Apr 22 '12 at 06:41

score 13 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 22 '12 at 08:05

This is normal behavior in Android, all activities currently not visible on screen (after onStop) can be killed without notice (i.e. onDestory) if the system has low memory.

This usually happens to our app on one of our test devices which has memory issues regardless of our app.

You can usually recreate this behavior when you open the camera via the intent, and then rotate the device (portrait to landscape), this will also kill and re-create your app.

To solve this you need to extend onSaveInstanceState and use the savedInstanceState parameter in your onCreate to pass from your killed instance to your new instance some important information (like "we're in the middle of getting a pic from the camera").

Okay that's not the answer that I was hoping for, but I see that trying to save the application state is the only way to handle my problem. Thanks! — timoschloesser, Apr 25 '12 at 07:32

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 19 '12 at 20:18

I can think of two possibilities...

It's not killing the activity, but the intent launches a new activity. You can stop this by putting a tag in your manifest.xml as an attribute in the activity tag like this:

<activity android:name=".nameOfActivity"
android:launchMode="singleTop" />
Make sure that the media intent is under the activity to handle the photo, and not a main/launcher activity.

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 23 '12 at 21:59

1

IMO two options:

Implement onSaveInstanceState/onRestoreInstanceState or
Make your activity a service.

answered Apr 23 '12 at 21:59

user1352357

36
1

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 02 '13 at 14:07

1

I faced this issue and got a solution after R&D for it. Set Target Android 4.0 and then add this line in AndroidManifest.xml of activity:

android:configChanges="screenLayout|uiMode|orientation|screenSize|smallestScreenSize"

It works for me.

answered Jan 02 '13 at 14:07

raisam

11
1

Raj Shah · Answer 5 · 2012-04-23T12:39:04.070

When you start media intent use following method instead of startActivity(intent)

startActivityForResult(intent, REQUEST_CODE); //private int REQUEST_CODE = 232

When the started activity finishes, your calling activity will be started. You need to handle this using following function

protected void onActivityResult(int requestCode, int resultCode, Intent data) {
     if (requestCode == REQUEST_CODE && resultCode == RESULT_OK) {
      //Perform your task       
      }
}

The activity started need to override follwoing method

@Override
    public void onBackPressed() {
        Intent intent = new Intent();
        setResult(REQUEST_CODE, intent);
        super.onBackPressed();
    }

startActivityForResult() is an special way for starting activity for a specific task and get the desired result. The called activity will send the data back.

You can use the method putExtra() & getExtra in intent to send and receive data between two activity.

This will solve your problem hopefully. If you have doubts comment. And if possible share your code so it can be more clear.

Android system stops application when launching Media Intent

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