That would be highly unusable, but fortunately that's not the way Android works. Roughly what happens is that when an app (actually an Activity.. but we won't

That would be highly unusable, but fortunately that's not the way Android works. Roughly what happens is that when an app (actually an Activity.. but we won't get into the difference right now) is no longer visible to the user, the OS automatically saves most of the apps state, and calls the apps onStop method to signal the app to save any app specific state. If the app is later killed, the next time it's started one of the items passed to the app by the OS is a reference to the previously saved state. The effect for the user is much like you describe it for the iPhone. It's as though your apps never die. Whenever you restart them, whether it's 5 minutes from now or 5 days, everything is exactly as you last left it. Except that, unlike on a PC, those "background apps" don't take up any resources. Obviously there is room for poorly written apps to flub up, or for apps to override the normal behavior for specific reasons.