The most significant difference in lifecycle between an activity and a fragment is how one is stored in its respective back stack. An activity is placed into a back stack of activities that's managed by the system when it's stopped, by default (so that the user can navigate back to it with the Back button, as discussed in Tasks and Back Stack). However, a fragment is placed into a back stack managed by the host activity only when you explicitly request that the instance be saved by calling addToBackStack() during a transaction that removes the fragment.
Otherwise, managing the fragment lifecycle is very similar to managing the activity lifecycle. So, the same practices for managing the activity lifecycle also apply to fragments. What you also need to understand, though, is how the life of the activity affects the life of the fragment.
& for multi pane layouts you have to use fragment that you can't achieve with activity.
Activity
1. Activities are one of the fundamental building blocks of apps on the Android platform. They serve as the entry point for a user's interaction with an app
and are also central to how a user navigates within an app or between apps
2. Lifecycle methods are hosted by OS.
3. Lifecycle of activity
Fragments
1. A Fragment represents a behavior or a portion of user interface in an Activity. You can combine multiple fragments in a single activity to build a multi-pane UI and reuse a fragment in multiple activities. You can think of a fragment as a modular section of an activity, which has its own lifecycle, receives its own input events, and which you can add or remove while the activity is running.
2. Lifecycle methods are hosted by are hosted by
hosting activity.
3. Lifecycle of a fragment
Activity is the UI of an application through which user can interact and
Fragment is the part of the Activity,it is an sub-Activity inside activity
which has its own Life Cycle which runs parallel to the Activities Life Cycle.
Activity is an application component that gives a user interface where the user can interact.
The fragment is a part of an activity, which contributes its own UI to that activity.
For Tablet or if mobile is in landscape then Using fragment we can show two lists like the only list for show the state name and other lists will show the state description in single activity but using Activity we can't do the same thing.
Activity is not dependent on fragment.but
The fragment is dependent on Activity, it can't exist independently.
without using fragment in Activity we can't create multi-pane UI. but
using multiple fragments in a single activity we can create multi-pane UI.
If we create a project using only Activity then its difficult to manage but
if we use fragments then the project structure will be good and we can handle it easily.
An activity may contain 0 or multiple numbers of fragments. A fragment can be
reused in multiple activities,
so it acts like a reusable component in activities.
Lifecycle methods are hosted by OS. The activity has its own life cycle. Lifecycle methods in fragments are hosted by hosting the activity.
For Activity, we just need to mention in Manifest but for fragment its not
required.
Activity is not lite weight. The fragment is the lite weight.