TL;DR
- There are widely-reported memory management problems with the Google Pixel 3.
- Google is aware of the issues and will push a fix “in the coming weeks,” likely with the December security update.
- The issues cause background apps to spontaneously close.
This problem (or feature, depending on how you look at it) keeps the phone snappy by ensuring only a few apps are hogging the device’s relatively small amount of 4GB RAM. However, this will cause background apps to close, which is pretty annoying if you wanted that particular app to be open.
For example, our own tests of the Google Pixel 3 XL concluded that using the camera while listening to music or podcasts will shut down the background app playing the media. That’s pretty annoying.
Google Pixel 3 camera shootout
Features
Luckily, Google is aware of the problem and issued a statement on the matter to 9to5Google. In the statement, Google makes it clear a fix is coming — however, it didn’t clarify when.
Judging from what Google does reveal in the statement, it’s likely the fix will arrive at the beginning of December along with the final security patch of 2018. This is just a guess, however, as Google does not give a definitive date.
Google also doesn’t clarify how it will fix this issue. Will it allow more apps to be available in the background? Will it not allow certain apps to close which users would likely want to continue running in the background? We’re not sure and will have to wait for the update to know.
