How to use SavedStateHandle and the Single Source of Truth pattern to build "death-proof" apps that never lose user progress. TL;DR: ViewModel survives rotations, but not process death. LMK (Low Memory Killer) will kill your background app to reclaim RAM. SavedStateHandle is your tool for restoring small UI states (IDs, flags). Room/DataStore is required for critical business data persistence. Test using adb shell am kill <package> to see your app's true resilience. The Ghost in the Machine You’re in a banking app, halfway through a wire transfer. You switch to your email to copy an OTP. When you return, the app has reset to the login screen, and your progress is gone. To the user, this is a “glitch.” To a seasoned Android developer , this is a failure to architect for Process Death . Android enforces strict process management regardless of available RAM. If you want to build professional software, you must s...