Comment by jerf

w.r.t. few apps caring about state, I recently upgraded my phone, which I had been using for a while and did not realize was a 2021 model, basically solely because at 4GB of RAM, I was getting to the point that I couldn't switch between any two apps without them all totally restarting on every switch because I was out of RAM all the time. I was also just starting to notice the battery was going but I could have managed that for a while yet... I really upgraded just for the RAM.

(Also I had to reset the built-in camera to factory state and tell it to stop updating, because it couldn't even start with my phone's RAM anymore. Weird thing is I can't tell you what it was doing any better than the stock factory version.)

But on, ahem, a "real" phone, it is nice to just assume that either I'm still swapped in, or the user doesn't care anymore. It's not quite 100% accurate, but it's pretty close, and low-effort for the app developer who doesn't have to be guessing any more about what state is and is not important.