If you are looking at a page and you click a link that routes to the same controller you're already looking at again, angular throws that controller instance away and creates a new one. That is, unless you only changed the 'search' part of the url and reloadOnSearch:false is set for the current route. In that case it just fires $routeUpdate and you can check the $routeParams to see the differences.

I see no reason why this feature has to be restricted to the 'search' part of the url though. I'd love to see a per-view option just like reloadOnSearch:false that would simply fire $routeUpdate if you happened to hit a route back to the same controller again. You could then pull the new values out of the $routeParams just like with reloadOnSearch:false. The benefit from this is prettier urls, and not having to structure your urls differently just so you can enable navigation within a view without redrawing the whole ng-view.

I could probably write the patch for this myself when I get the time.