An Android Glitch
On the whole, I'm reasonably happy with the Android OS, but there is one problem I have observed in two unrelated applications and so suspect is coming from the operating system.
One of the applications is DocsToGo, which provides, among other things, a word processor that can read and write MS Word documents. I call up a document, perhaps edit it a bit, then switch to doing other things with the phone. Eventually I go back—and get a message telling me that the program was shut down improperly and asking if I want to retrieve the document I was working on.
The other application is Divide and Conquer, a mildly entertaining game. I get to level seven, switch to doing something else with the phone. Eventually I go back—and discover that I am back at the beginning of the game.
I suspect I know what is happening. Android only keeps a small number of applications open at once. After I switch from one program and run several others, the first gets dropped—forcibly shut down. My guess is that the process doesn't involve actually waking up the program and telling it that it is about to be shut down, so there is no way the program can respond by saving its present state. From the standpoint of DocsToGo, it is as if the computer crashed while it was suspended.
Perhaps someone out there who knows more than I do about the Android internals can tell me if this guess is right, and if there is some way of programming around the problem. Also whether the problem still exists on Android 2.0.