Can application Android services run in the background? [released]

Yes, I can see some services (probably from the Android support package?) running. But I cannot see a single service from an app I installed separately, for example K-9 or aptiode.

EDIT: Or was your answer supposed to mean that those threads I found only talk about standard Android support package services? Anyhow, my original question remains..

Ok, thanks for your answer. This behaviour would actually also be quite acceptable, if that OOM killer guy hadn't become so oversensitive, but that is a different story I suppose...

I unaccepted the answer, because in comments further down, as well as comments to the question Why not shutdown aliendalvik after closing last Android app? people report getting notifications with no app being visibly open.

re-accepting your answer because it looks like that is how things _should_ go. For the fact that it doesn't always go like that I created a bug: [bug] Android app processes sometimes running without app open

Ok interesting, thanks for the investigation, it's good to know that for now it's better to manually shut down Alien Dalvik from the Utilities tools to avoid extra battery consumption.

Unaccepting once more :-/ In the comments to bug [bug] Android app processes sometimes running without app open it was pointed out that e.g. skype is expected to run in the background when 'exited' via the back button. In this case the service is running even though the UI is completely gone. So it would be nice to get some official statement on what the expected behavior is.

Yes, I can confirm. The notification comes, when doing something with sailfish in foreground. Strange enough, after opening whatsapp and closing again no more notification will be raised, so I guess, it's only functional after first start. Android is started automatically after reboot on my device, no idea why. Maybe that's the point when the background services starts.

You might want to look into installing Lighthouse or Crest from the Jolla store. This will allow you to see all the stuff running in the background in a nice UI. Not saying this is the solution but if you want to understand the workings of Alien better it's worth having a look.

Apparently it's not only needed to understand Alien, but someone should fix it. I mean if application services are really started without the actual application open, this sounds like a bug. (Give the approved answer still holds.) But yes, would be nice to know what processes are running when those "ghost notifications" come around.

I have noticed with Viber that if I press the back button in the android layout, the backround process remains running and I get notifications without having the app in the home screen. If I open the app from the notification screen and then close the app by swiping from the top the notifications don't come through and the background process is killed - though this behaviour is not consistent. Sometimes the background process remains.

@raketti: Thanks for the description. I suspect that is not how it should go. Half of the users would like to have an android service running in the background and are told that they cannot. And the other half is relying on the info that all app-specific android services are stopped when the app is not visible on the screen. Turns out both groups are fooled :-) Do you care to file a bug?