Forcing Android to not redraw activity on orientation change

Question

I have been going gaga to figure this out.
Although I have read a lot that on Orientation Change, Android kills an activity and starts it as a fresh one, and the only w

Answer 1

Just answered this question earlier: Android - screen orientation reloads activity

In your case you want to completely prevent Android from killing your Activity. You'll need to update your manifest to catch the orientation change, then implement the orientation change callback to actually do whatever you need to do (which may be nothing) when an orientation change occurs.