Activity

Android callsonSaveInstanceState() before the activity becomes vulnerable to being destroyed by the system, but does not bother calling it when the instance is actually being destroyed by a user action (such as pressing the BACK key) 

从这句话可以知道，当某个activity变得“容易”被系统销毁时，该activity的onSaveInstanceState就会被执行，除非该activity是被用户主动销毁的。

 1、当用户按下HOME键时。 这是显而易见的，系统不知道你按下HOME后要运行多少其他的程序，自然也不知道activity A是否会被销毁，故系统会调用onSaveInstanceState，让用户有机会保存某些非永久性的数据。以下几种情况的分析都遵循该原则

 2、长按HOME键，选择运行其他的程序时。

 3、按下电源按键(关闭屏幕显示)时。

 4、从activity A中启动一个新的activity时。

 5、屏幕方向切换时，例如从竖屏切换到横屏时。 在屏幕切换之前，系统会销毁activity A，在屏幕切换之后系统又会自动地创建activity A，所以onSaveInstanceState一定会被执行

 总而言之，onSaveInstanceState的调用遵循一个重要原则，即当系统“未经你许可”时销毁了你的activity，则onSaveInstanceState会被系统调用，这是系统的责任，因为它必须要提供一个机会让你保存你的数据(当然你不保存那就随便你了)。

Note: There's no guarantee that onSaveInstanceState() will be called before your activity is destroyed, because there are cases in which it won't be necessary to save the state (such as when the user leaves your activity using the BACK key, because the user is explicitly closing the activity). If the method is called, it is always called before onStop() and possibly before onPause().

Note: Because onSaveInstanceState() is not guaranteed to be called, you should use it only to record the transient state of the activity (the state of the UI)—you should never use it to store persistent data. Instead, you should use onPause() to store persistent data (such as data that should be saved to a database) when the user leaves the activity.

A good way to test your application's ability to restore its state is to simply rotate the device so that the screen orientation changes.When the screen orientation changes, the system destroys and recreates the activity in order to apply alternative resources that might be available for the new orientation. For this reason alone, it's very important that your activity completely restores its state when it is recreated, because users regularly rotate the screen while using applications.

The order of lifecycle callbacks is well defined, particularly when the two activities are in the same process and one is starting the other. Here's the order of operations that occur when Activity A starts Acivity B:

1. Activity A's onPause() method executes.
2. Activity B's onCreate(), onStart(), and onResume() methods execute in sequence. (Activity B now has user focus.)
3. Then, if Activity A is no longer visible on screen, its onStop() method executes.

This predictable sequence of lifecycle callbacks allows you to manage the transition of information from one activity to another. For example, if you must write to a database when the first activity stops so that the following activity can read it, then you should write to the database during onPause() instead of during onStop().