ANR, hard crash, watchdog: three questions operations can ask

A hard crash ends the process. An application-not-responding trace means the main thread was busy long enough for the system to complain. A watchdog kill is the system giving up on a resume or a broadcast that never returned.

Operations in Selangor used to ask us “is it crashing?” as if the three were the same. They are not. Rolling back a freeze that only happens after a font pack download will not help if the native crash is in a decoder that only exists in the new version.

Three questions we teach duty managers: Did the app disappear, or did the screen stop? Did it happen after coming back from another app? Did it start with this version code? Those answers decide whether App Garden Base opens crash stacks or ANR traces first.