Are other browsers better with refreshing tabs?

[Vertigo50]

Okay, so I have to admit all the complaints of 1gb of RAM being a problem seemed really silly to me. I really had never had issues with the different tabs in Safari refreshing all the time, etc.

Well, now it's starting to really get on my nerves. I've lost countless posts that I was typing in one tab, went to another to grab a link, came back and it refreshes, erasing all my typing.

So the question is, do other browsers like Chrome for iOS do a better job of this?

Honestly, I still have doubts about whether it's really an issue of a lack of RAM or just stupid programming. I've had computers with 1/4 that much RAM with nine of these kinds of issues. I know it's not a perfect comparison, but in the worst case, I don't see why Safari couldn't even just dump the info into some of the disk memory or something. It really just feels like bad programming choices rather than hardware limitations.

 

[gordon1234]

Okay, so I have to admit all the complaints of 1gb of RAM being a problem seemed really silly to me. I really had never had issues with the different tabs in Safari refreshing all the time, etc.

Well, now it's starting to really get on my nerves. I've lost countless posts that I was typing in one tab, went to another to grab a link, came back and it refreshes, erasing all my typing.

So the question is, do other browsers like Chrome for iOS do a better job of this?

Honestly, I still have doubts about whether it's really an issue of a lack of RAM or just stupid programming. I've had computers with 1/4 that much RAM with nine of these kinds of issues. I know it's not a perfect comparison, but in the worst case, I don't see why Safari couldn't even just dump the info into some of the disk memory or something. It really just feels like bad programming choices rather than hardware limitations.

You can't compare iOS to desktop systems. Desktops use virtual memory - they allocate a section of the hard drive to use as memory. Open too many things and your system will slow to a crawl, but it's essentially impossible to "run out" of memory. iOS does not have virtual memory or a paging file. When the device gets low on memory, it needs to free up more quickly or it crashes. A paging file would be competing for the flash I/O and would have performance consequences.

Third-party apps can control whether tabs refresh as long as the browser remains frontmost, However, this only applies as long as you're only within the browser. Switch to another app, and the browser has no control at all over whether it gets terminated by the OS. If it does get terminated, every single open tab will refresh when you open it again.

 

[bandofbrothers]

Check out.... Atomic Browser.

It's not had an update in an age but I get NO refreshed tabs with that one.

 

[Vertigo50]

You can't compare iOS to desktop systems. Desktops use virtual memory - they allocate a section of the hard drive to use as memory. Open too many things and your system will slow to a crawl, but it's essentially impossible to "run out" of memory. iOS does not have virtual memory or a paging file. When the device gets low on memory, it needs to free up more quickly or it crashes. A paging file would be competing for the flash I/O and would have performance consequences.

Third-party apps can control whether tabs refresh as long as the browser remains frontmost, However, this only applies as long as you're only within the browser. Switch to another app, and the browser has no control at all over whether it gets terminated by the OS. If it does get terminated, every single open tab will refresh when you open it again.

Your points are valid, but the browser COULD have control over whether it gets terminated, since Apple designs the OS and the hardware. it also might be time for Apple to consider using a bit of memory storage for a paging file or else increase the RAM.

 

[gordon1234]

Your points are valid, but the browser COULD have control over whether it gets terminated, since Apple designs the OS and the hardware. it also might be time for Apple to consider using a bit of memory storage for a paging file or else increase the RAM.

No, it really couldn't. The whole iOS process model is based on the operating system being able to unload applications from memory at any time. this is the only reason you can get decent performance and battery life on a mobile device. This is how every other mobile operating system does things as well (Android has virtual memory, but still terminates applications and background tasks when memory is low.) it's simply not feasible to do things any other way on resource-constrained devices. Apple is even moving more towards this model on the Desktop for the same performance and battery life advantages.

More ram is an obvious solution, and I'm sure future iPhones will have at least 2 GB. However, RAM uses battery - it has to be continuously powered or it loses its contents. I suspect this is why Apple chose to go with 1 GB of RAM in the iPhone 6.

Frankly, I agree that iOS 8 is overly aggressive in terminating background tasks. I think this is probably unavoidable with more background tasks than ever and more 64-bit apps that are RAM-hungry. Apple may be able to optimize this somewhat in future updates, but there is probably not that much they can do.

 

[MacTCE]

I used Chrome as my daily driver and never get any refreshed tabs. I did notice some refreshes in Safari so it could be possible Apple's more aggressive terminating it's own apps than it does with 3rd party.