Is this the right trick to keep a service alive even under low memory pressure?

Question

I used the following code to keep a service alive:

@Override
public int onStartCommand(Intent intent, int flags, int startId) {
    ...
    keepServiceAlive(this, 2222);
    return super.onStartCommand(intent, flags, startId);
}
@SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
public void keepServiceAlive(Service service, int id) {
    Notification note = new Notification(0, null, System.currentTimeMillis());
    note.flags |= Notification.FLAG_NO_CLEAR;        
    service.startForeground(id, note);
}

But sometimes the service was still being killed. Could you help me confirm the correctness of this piece of code, or would you offer a better solution?

Answer 1

You should not create a malformed Notification object. Android 4.3 will now show it's own Notification to the user when it detects this hack and the user will be informed that your service is running. If you really need it to be in the foreground, give it a proper icon and let your users know about your service, and explain why it's necessary. You might even consider allowing them to decide whether to have the service run as a foreground service via SharedPreferences.

See this blog post by CommonsWare