Here are some miscellaneous notes on Android startup of the zygote process. This information is true for eclair, as of August 2010. Sequence of Zygote startup steps init runs the C++ program /system/bin/app_process, and gives the resulting process the name "zygote" This is based on the line from init.rc: service zygote /system/bin/app_process -Xzygote /system/bin --zygote --start-system-server app