Mobile Lifecycle and State Restoration Quiz
Four Android-flavored questions on activity lifecycle, configuration changes, and saved-state restoration. Aimed at native Android candidates and at backend devs interviewing onto a mobile-leaning team.
By @folakemansour
December 29, 2025
·
Updated May 20, 2026
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15
4.2 (11)
An Activity holds the user's typed-but-not-submitted form input in a field. When the device rotates, the field resets to empty. Walk me through why, and write the smallest fix using onSaveInstanceState.
Demo
Demo: user types "hello" in the form and rotates the device. Without onSaveInstanceState, draftMessage resets to "" because the config change recreates the Activity and instance fields go with it. With onSaveInstanceState writing KEY_DRAFT and onCreate reading it back from the Bundle, the field shows "hello" after rotation. Same pattern covers font-scale and dark-mode changes.
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