Android activity life cycle - what are all these methods for?

Question

What is the life cycle of an Android activity? Why are so many similar sounding methods (onCreate(), onStart(), onResume()) called dur

Answer 1

From the Android Developers page,

onPause():

Called when the system is about to start resuming a previous activity. This is typically used to commit unsaved changes to persistent data, stop animations and other things that may be consuming CPU, etc. Implementations of this method must be very quick because the next activity will not be resumed until this method returns. Followed by either onResume() if the activity returns back to the front, or onStop() if it becomes invisible to the user.

onStop():

Called when the activity is no longer visible to the user, because another activity has been resumed and is covering this one. This may happen either because a new activity is being started, an existing one is being brought in front of this one, or this one is being destroyed. Followed by either onRestart() if this activity is coming back to interact with the user, or onDestroy() if this activity is going away.

Now suppose there are three Activities and you go from A to B, then onPause of A will be called now from B to C, then onPause of B and onStop of A will be called.

The paused Activity gets a Resume and Stopped gets Restarted.

When you call this.finish(), onPause-onStop-onDestroy will be called. The main thing to remember is: paused Activities get Stopped and a Stopped activity gets Destroyed whenever Android requires memory for other operations.

I hope it's clear enough.