Well I have yet to try that out because I'm still on 1.6 firmware (Donut) release on my G1, but I have read a lot of articles and they all have said that Android is awesome on memory management. It's not my opinion, it is a tried-and-true method that has been tested by reputable companies and they said Android executes it much better than Apple.
With the Froyo release, (2.2) you now can save your apps and games over to your miniSD card and allow it to run directly from the miniSD card rather than having to have it installed on your phone, which is a huge factor in why Android is always changing for the better. But still, even with that feature enabled or not, Android still does the memory management one better over Apple.
Android Developers Blog: Multitasking the Android Way
Also for TasKiller, you shouldn't be using that as it will harm your system further because the core OS is already doing the management and when you kill an application, you kill it entirely, thus you damage the OS or you damage the program itself and may require a phone reboot or a re-install of the program itself.
FAQ: Why You Shouldn’t Be Using a Task Killer with Android Geek For Me – Sprint Evo 4g & CDMA Hero
I have read stories about how some people were able to install 50 apps, even 120 apps at once on their phone (forgot which phone it was but there were several different phones) and it was android based and they said it ran smoothly as if it was unpacked on the first day with pre-installed apps. They did asked some iPhone users on how many apps they had installed, and I've read the comments from iPhone users and they said they had about 30 to 40 installed and they tried to install more but it slowed their phone down big time. It has to be app to app on each phone because it depends on which apps you have installed because each app have its own services and all that will always varies on phone by phone.
As for iPhone doing it better than Android as you said, I'm not sure if you are talking about iPhone 4 or an older iPhone with iOS 4.0 but if you are talking about BEFORE the iOS 4.0 or BEFORE iPhone 4, well yeah they do it better because they're single-tasked, thus you can only run a program at one time, then when you want to run something else, YOU HAVE TO EXIT that program and run that other program, which is why Apple "excels" at executing programs, because of less services running in the background. As for Apple's iPhone 4 right now, it appears to be doing better now only because Apple set a limitation on certain apps that can conform to the multitasking rule and whatever else. If a developer want to make an app and wish to have it run in the background or whatever, they will have to lobby for support from Apple to allow it to be included. If Apple denies it, it will not be included, thus going back to being single-tasked.
I have no experience with using a Palm Pre and don't know much about it because it didn't attract my interest because Palm Pre is tacky and small for me to use. SO I wouldn't know what or how Palm Pre would do with their apps.
Installed apps is DIFFERENT from apps being running in the background. Installed apps takes up a lot of RAM but the point is, if you have a better phone, more precisely, a current smartphone like the HTC evo 4g, Droid X, Samsung Galaxy S and on, you will see a dramatic difference between the 1st generation phones, namely the G1, Hero, MyTouch 3g and on and current phones like the Droid, Droid Incredible, Droid X, Samsung Galaxy S, HTC Evo 4G, Dell Streak and on. So when an installed program resides in RAM, it takes up some space, but when a program is being run, it also executes services which takes up more RAM space so when you are on very low RAM amount, it get bottlenecked. With 512 MB RAM, you will have abundance space to install 100 apps plus services and all.
Also, keep in mind, there are developers out there that could be amateur developers that do not know how to use the pause trigger/stop trigger and all that so they could be developing the app in a bad way, hence the "memory leak" that you may be talking about. If coming from a reputable company such as AIM from AOL, ESPN SportCenter (or whatever it is called), The Weather Channel from Weather.com, Twitter from Twitter, and on, will work like wonder because they have a team of developers to create the program while amateur developers probably read from a book on how to develop a program for Android and forgot to follow the guidelines to execute a program from start to finish. It is a common mistake and I've seen that happen on a iPhone even. It's normal and it's given so you can't really avoid it. Well, actually you can help by contributing your feedback to the developer by making a report and they will read all of the info generated by your phone and fine-tune the app to work fine on your Droid. Linux has a growing community of developers/troubleshooters/enthusiasts and many more that help each other with bugs, kernel panics and whatnot. Apple and Microsoft have their own team of developers and engineers to do that while Linux does not. Google do have their own team of developers but not devoted to an individual app created by a developer. They focus on their OWN apps while the aspiring developers focus on theirs, which is why you constantly see updates to the apps, which is wonderful because I'm always looking forward to the next updates because it will have bug fixes, GUI changes and interface changes to make the apps appealing as well as Android more appealing by the byte.
Are you sure Windows is "free-for-all"? Last I remember, Microsoft is a closed-source company that will not allow anyone to read their source code and I HIGHLY doubt anyone can do anything they wish to Windows Mobile, let alone Windows. I think, what you meant by that, Microsoft is allowing people to develop programs the way they want and put it on Windows Mobile so if that is what you meant, then I still stand by how the program is properly developed and executed because it still goes back to the source; the developer(s) and how they designed the program with services and calls.
Google Maps is developed by Google and I have yet to see a memory leak on my G1 other than when using GPS, it drains my battery faster than normal but that's ok because it's a first generation phone and I still get updates from Google on Google Maps. You are forgetting that when an application stays in memory too long, the kernel detects the program being inactive for so long, it terminates the program so the OS runs much better/frees up memory for the upcoming app to be loaded. If it did detect a "memory leak" it would have terminated that program right away which is what you would have gotten a force close without a "wait" option. By seeing that, you would then alert the developer that by going to x, you got this y message and force closed on you. That's why there's comments on the developer's page for the application to express their opinion and/or feedback so the developer would listen and improvise on their applications. If you are not helping by giving your feedback to the developer that they may have missed because they had a device in mind they are developing, and has not thought about the Droid at all, it is your fault for not helping the developer because the developer may be limited on what phones they have to test on because of the hardware difference between many phones. You need to help them to improve the programs you are using if you wish to continue to use it.
I have seen some graphic stress tests and it looks almost as identical as a Playstation 3 game and it is very impressive. Apple is good at image compression and execution of games only because their image compression is better but still that is not stopping Android from improving their gaming capabilities and I'm sure Android will get better. Don't forget Android is still in its infancy stage, but maturing, while Apple's iOS 4 may be in it's mature stage because it's just a HUGE copy and paste from 3GS (3.1.2 or whatever) over to 4.0 with some additions such as wallpapers, folders and all (big whoopie...) Android is almost at 3.0, which is expected to be released at end of this year or by 1st quarter of next year and it is going to bring much more so I anticipate that the 3.0 will finally bring Android up on top and battle it out with Apple then just maybe, 4.0 will kick Apple out of the water and fall all the way to the bottom. At this point, it is like comparing apples to oranges (no pun intended) and soon enough, Android will be the new Apple!
