HTC says it purposefully made multitasking broken on the One X
Recently, we've been getting a number of e-mails from readers saying that we need to do a story about how the multitasking on the HTC One X is broken. Amazingly, just as we were working on that very article, HTC made a statement on the subject. Unfortunately, it's not a statement that users will really want to hear.
The general issue that we've been hearing about is that tasks that get sent to the background on the HTC One X are not being held in memory, but rather are being shut down, and so when you go back to an app it will start from scratch, or in the case of the browser, it will reload the page you had open no matter what. This effectively made multitasking non-existent aside from the HTC-built apps, which are actually held in memory.
HTC commented on the issue today, and effectively said that it made the memory management and task killing on the One X extremely aggressive on purpose. Of course, HTC started out by placating users, but that probably won't go too far. The company told The Verge:
HTC is aware of some questions in the enthusiast community about how the HTC One X handles multitasking and memory management for background apps. We value the community's input and are always looking for ways to enhance customers' experience with our devices. That said, right now multitasking is operating normally according to our custom memory management specifications which balance core ICS features with a consistent HTC Sense experience.
So, there you have it. Killing your apps is considered "normal" by HTC's standards. Just so everyone understands what the issue is, here's a video made by a reader of the multitasking on the One X.
Things that are NOT allowed: