Question

How to prevent an activity from being recreated on turning screen off?

What I do

1. Start Bejewels and go to the jewelry screen.
2. Press power button shortly. The screen is turned off, but the device is not.
3. Press power button again.

What I see

The same screen as before turning screen off.

In case of my application (trivial one, just a web-app with a single WebView) the scenario is the following:

What I do

1. Start my app. The activity onCreate() method loads an URL into the WebView.
2. Press power button shortly. The screen is turned off, but the device is not.
3. Press power button again.

What I see

The WebView is reloading the page.

What I expected

As in Bejewels case I want to see the same screen, that for my app is the page in its previous state: scripts are running, a form fields are
filled etc.

Debugging showed, that I was wrong (in a previous question) and onDestroy() and onCreate() are being called one-by-one when the screen is just turned on. And since I still hear a music, played by a script, when the screen is off, it looks like both the activity and the WebView do exist until I press power button again.

What I tried.

1. android:alwaysRetainTaskState=”true” The same behavior.
2. Reading about intents (to no avail, I just did not understand, how they are applied to my situation).
3. Using PhoneGap. It behaves differently: just kills the whole application on pressing power button. This IS better, but not the best.

Answer 1

1. Create the view in Application.onCreate().
2. Add the view to a layout in Activity.onCreate().
3. Remove the view from the layout in Activity.onDestroy().

Details are here:
Attach/detach Android view to/from layout