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I was wondering why it seems many applications in the Android eco-system come without a true "close" feature? It seems "different(to be politically correct)" to have to manage if an application is running through the OS rather than the actual application itself.

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    You'd probably have to ask individual developers why they did or did not. How are we supposed to know?
    – ale
    Apr 14, 2011 at 16:19
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    @Al Everett Matthew Read knew...
    – Achilles
    Apr 14, 2011 at 17:54
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    I think Al's point was that although Matthew was able to provide a generic answer, the only way of knowing why a given app doesn't have a close button is by asking the author. If they conform with the development guidelines then it's unneeded, and the problems people experience with apps draining battery in the background can really be attributed to poorly written applications. Then again, this is a bit of a generic question rather than "Why does <some app> not have a close button?"
    – eldarerathis
    Apr 14, 2011 at 18:37

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This is a policy encouraged by Google. I can't find the exact link, but you can see related guidelines here: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/menu_design.html

The idea is that users shouldn't have to explicitly manage their apps, they can just let the Android OS hibernate or terminate applications on an as-needed basis. The problem, of course, is that this doesn't work perfectly. I find it's often too aggressive with apps I want running, and not aggressive enough with services I'm not interested in. But the goal is to minimize the time users need to spend managing application states.

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    Ah ok. But this policy assumes all apps are implemented equally. Some apps nuke battery-life even when not being "used" directly by me. I have to get used to this coming from a blackberry world.
    – Achilles
    Apr 14, 2011 at 15:33
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    I agree, it's far from perfected. One of the best advantages of rooting my phone was the ability to tweak the task killer settings.
    – Matthew Read
    Apr 14, 2011 at 15:35

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