Asynchronous processing in Broadcast receiver

Before API level 11, you could not perform any asynchronous operation in the onReceive() method, because once the onReceive() method had been finished, the Android system was allowed to recycle that component. If you have potentially long running operations, you should trigger a service instead.

Since Android API 11 you can call the goAsync() method. This method returns an object of the PendingResult type. The Android system considers the receiver as alive until you call the PendingResult.finish() on this object. With this option you can trigger asynchronous processing in a receiver. As soon as that thread has completed, its task calls finish() to indicate to the Android system that this component can be recycled.