I noticed that the Android Developers Activity section has been updated since I started my app, but I am still unclear what the simplest Activity Lifecycle is.
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Android system is handling the lifecycle: i.e. instantiating activities and calling lifecycle methods. So I don't know what you mean by "destroy the activity". You, as a developer, have no such ability.
Second, activity lifecycle flow can be sometimes confusing (I know I struggled with it at the beginning). So, just implement all lifecycle methods and put logging statements in them. Then try all real-life use cases (including receiving a call during app use) to see how lifecycle methods are called.