As I mentioned above, I've tried a variety of methods along those lines - periodically close and re-open the connection, check and retry before each command, etc.

The problem is, they all work for a while, and then don't work at all. So once the connection drops, no amount of close/re-open attempts or anything will restart it. The onClose and onError callbacks are sometimes triggered, but sometimes not. Leaving the activity and coming back to it is the only way to (usually) restart the connection.