How do you "close" an app?

You don't really close apps in Android so much as they simply lose "focus". Typically, you would hit the home button or the back button like you mentioned and that is sufficient.

Android will quietly keep your apps in the background as long as memory requirements for any new apps that you've launched do not cause him (or her ) to terminate your previously opened apps.

Android's memory and process management since 2.1 are much better than the earlier versions which caused a lot of people to acquire and use various task killers. You really don't (typically) need a task killer app on your Android device. If you ever really do need to terminate a process, you can easily go into Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications, select your process and Force stop it (usually a very rare thing, but there are the occasionaly apps that misbehave and need to be force closed).

Hope that helps!

Cheers!

 

I've read that using the back button to back out of an app actually closes it, I'm not 100% sure but it makes sense to me. For the browser, if you X out the tab (the tiny x next to the + for adding a tab) it will close the browser, assuming you only have one tab open. That said I believe the above poster is correct and it's basically a non issue.

 

Very well said... ... specially that last paragraph.


... but i would say "back" button is the closest to "close".. for example: if you are in a game and press "home" and then open the same game again, the game opens exactly where you left... now if you press "back", until you are out of the game, and you open the game again, the game has to load up from the bigging.

 

Thank you, too!

That's a good point and one that I can expand on from an app developer's perspective. I have two apps out on the Market and initial / early versions of them contained "Exit" menu options to appease and give folks an obvious choice and means of "closing" the app.

Then, I as I read and researched more about proper app development, it was clear the proper handling of the back button (which should and normally does "pop" you up one context level) or the home button was the best and prescribed method. Some "less well-written" (that sounds weird, lol ) apps (especially ones that I observed in late '09 and early '10) did not properly allow one to gracefully exit or pop-back out. Thankfully, I don't think these are as prevalent as they once were.

Cheers!

 

the only place where i could see devs disabling back or home button, is in (some) games, specially since you are all over the place touching the screen while playing, and with captivity buttons, you are very prompt to touch back or home by accident... thats so annoying

 

Hi guys.
I got this upgrade 63.5.25.en.EU.
WHAT SORT OF UPGRADE IS THIS? THE UNDROID VERSION IS INDICATED AS 3.1. JUST AS IT WAS BEFORE.
PLEASE ADVISE