I'm attempting to try to increase my battery life so it lasts longer than 12 hours (~13 seems to be my limit). (I'll admit I'm a bit jealous of those who can run the phone 24+ hours) Though it's somewhat painful, I'm shutting down most the programs I have running in the background. However there seems to be a number that like to restart even after I think I've disabled their startup, widgets, notifications, etc.
Is there a way to make sure programs that you install don't run? Or at least don't launch during start up? Perhaps something like msconfig in windows?
Thanks.
Raleran said:
I'm attempting to try to increase my battery life so it lasts longer than 12 hours (~13 seems to be my limit). (I'll admit I'm a bit jealous of those who can run the phone 24+ hours) Though it's somewhat painful, I'm shutting down most the programs I have running in the background. However there seems to be a number that like to restart even after I think I've disabled their startup, widgets, notifications, etc.
Is there a way to make sure programs that you install don't run? Or at least don't launch during start up? Perhaps something like msconfig in windows?
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Killing background tasks will only decrease your battery life. When an application goes to the background, it sits in memory but does NOT consume any CPU power. since the memory is in solid state, it requires no power to stay in that state. By constantly killing background applications, it will need to start up, reinitialize, and consume more power then if you had just left it alone. Also, long term performance will be negatively affected, even if you do expereince a small short term performance gain. the Android OS is designed at the core level to have applications behave this way, and modifying that behavior will make for a worse experience.
asrrin29 said:
Killing background tasks will only decrease your battery life. When an application goes to the background, it sits in memory but does NOT consume any CPU power. since the memory is in solid state, it requires no power to stay in that state. By constantly killing background applications, it will need to start up, reinitialize, and consume more power then if you had just left it alone. Also, long term performance will be negatively affected, even if you do expereince a small short term performance gain. the Android OS is designed at the core level to have applications behave this way, and modifying that behavior will make for a worse experience.
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Click to collapse
Eh, this is the first I've heard this. I don't remember reading this in the various battery optimization guides.
Still is there a was to stop things short of uninstalling? For example, I want to stop using the Yahoo Mail app but don't want to install yet. I went through all the options I could to disable checking/notifications, etc but it still pops back into memory constantly.
I assume youve tried the obvious, turn off WiFi (3G) and screen when not actively using it?! Those are the big batt.-eaters
Sent from my HTC Magic using XDA App
asrrin29 said:
Killing background tasks will only decrease your battery life. When an application goes to the background, it sits in memory but does NOT consume any CPU power. since the memory is in solid state, it requires no power to stay in that state. By constantly killing background applications, it will need to start up, reinitialize, and consume more power then if you had just left it alone. Also, long term performance will be negatively affected, even if you do expereince a small short term performance gain. the Android OS is designed at the core level to have applications behave this way, and modifying that behavior will make for a worse experience.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Documentation? As far as I have read an application does not go into any type of dehydrated state when running in the background / minimized. It can do anything it wants including using CPU cycles.
I do agree that most applications do not need to be killed with a task killer but leaving 3D games (for example) running in the background could hurt your battery. Also not all applications are progammed with ther same fore thought and skill level.
I get about 33% more runtime out of my battery using a task killer to kill specific applications that I know I do not want running in the background.
Streaker said:
I assume youve tried the obvious, turn off WiFi (3G) and screen when not actively using it?! Those are the big batt.-eaters
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Click to collapse
I leave wifi on since I'm usually in range. It's more efficient than 3g right? I alway sleep the device when I'm done. I still have huge percentages on the screen when looking at the battery usage. I'm trying a completely black screen now.
Mainly your widgets and icons and stuff still cover large portions of it, so: a black screen will help, not but alot.
Also, to keep items in RAM, to the second poster... What do you think is keeping those items in RAM?
Ummm... It's the CPU.
Task Killers won't help you on RAM usage at all (Because Android will automatically shuffle them out if it has to, or so I've read... I've yet to hit max memory). Task Killers DO help you as far as battery use goes, though... Keeping the browser killed if you aren't using it, etc.
Bjd223 said:
Documentation? As far as I have read an application does not go into any type of dehydrated state when running in the background / minimized. It can do anything it wants including using CPU cycles.
I do agree that most applications do not need to be killed with a task killer but leaving 3D games (for example) running in the background could hurt your battery. Also not all applications are progammed with ther same fore thought and skill level.
I get about 33% more runtime out of my battery using a task killer to kill specific applications that I know I do not want running in the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should clarify. I guess the term I meant to use is "suspended." If a program is actively "running" in the background, it will use CPU cycles. But if you simply stopped using a program, say for example the xda app, and returned to your homescreen, the application stays "suspended" in the background and consumes no CPU cycles until you go back to it. Now services that are updating, such as email or SMS, will use CPU cycles in the background because they are still actively running. But if you want to conserve battery life you can simply disable the notifications from most of these programs.
asrrin29 said:
I should clarify. I guess the term I meant to use is "suspended." If a program is actively "running" in the background, it will use CPU cycles. But if you simply stopped using a program, say for example the xda app, and returned to your homescreen, the application stays "suspended" in the background and consumes no CPU cycles until you go back to it. Now services that are updating, such as email or SMS, will use CPU cycles in the background because they are still actively running. But if you want to conserve battery life you can simply disable the notifications from most of these programs.
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Click to collapse
The app itself at that point may not be but the Android OS still does to maintain that suspended state.
I have some applications I rarely use or even some that I've never used but may want to in the future. I see absolutely no benefit in keeping these applications in the background. Further more, I've noticed a signficant drain on the battery when extra applications are running in the background. I'm sure it's not all of them, but I've yet to discover who exactly the culpit is. Right now I suspect it's the NPR app, perhaps due to data use?
The point is, there are perfectly good reasons to keep some apps in the background, and perfectly good reasons to kill others - or perferrably not have them start up at all unless I do it myself. Could be due to data usage (especially if you do not have unlimited data), could be due to concerns about excessive cpu usage. There really should be a clear method in which you can stop applications from opening on their own.
You can use the program "Autostarts" to keep applications from starting at startup. With it you can also prevent things from launching under a number of other situations. That might be what you are looking for. Just do a google search for the APK as I don't think it is in the market.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Shuggins said:
You can use the program "Autostarts" to keep applications from starting at startup. With it you can also prevent things from launching under a number of other situations. That might be what you are looking for. Just do a google search for the APK as I don't think it is in the market.
Wouldn't tasker also help?
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
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Sent from my AOSP on XDANDROID MSM using XDA App
To me, it's not a matter of "task killer or not", but rather when and where to use one. And I think it's simple: Don't bother, unless you suspect a specific app is doing something you don't want it to do in the background. Then, just kill that specific app and leave everything else alone. A Task manager that shows CPU% for each process can be handy for this as well.
I generally try to avoid killing tasks, but one night I had 50% battery on my phone and after about 2 hours or so I took it out of my pocket to make a phone call, and it was very hot and had about 12% of batter left -- something was running wild that shouldn't have been (I think it was Pandora, even though it was not currently playing any music!) So, background apps do occasionally run out of control, and you do need to occasionally kill them, but do it on an "as needed" basis.
Raleran said:
I'm attempting to try to increase my battery life so it lasts longer than 12 hours (~13 seems to be my limit). (I'll admit I'm a bit jealous of those who can run the phone 24+ hours) Though it's somewhat painful, I'm shutting down most the programs I have running in the background.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Unless the background process is syncing data, it won't eat your battery. So instead of wasting your time, you should focus on other energy hogs. Things like screen brightness, bluetooth, wifi, and gps.
Shuggins said:
You can use the program "Autostarts" to keep applications from starting at startup. With it you can also prevent things from launching under a number of other situations. That might be what you are looking for. Just do a google search for the APK as I don't think it is in the market.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
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Click to collapse
I installed Advanced Task Killer from the Market. It lets you kill all running applications including itself.
durrence
jsmith8858 said:
To me, it's not a matter of "task killer or not", but rather when and where to use one. And I think it's simple: Don't bother, unless you suspect a specific app is doing something you don't want it to do in the background. Then, just kill that specific app and leave everything else alone. A Task manager that shows CPU% for each process can be handy for this as well.
I generally try to avoid killing tasks, but one night I had 50% battery on my phone and after about 2 hours or so I took it out of my pocket to make a phone call, and it was very hot and had about 12% of batter left -- something was running wild that shouldn't have been (I think it was Pandora, even though it was not currently playing any music!) So, background apps do occasionally run out of control, and you do need to occasionally kill them, but do it on an "as needed" basis.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Or an auto-killer would've killed it before it killed your battery by 38% lol
Task Killings are bad, mmmkay...
Slightly off topic:
To help conserve battery power,
Use an all black desktop background since the black areas dont use battery power.
Hmm, people in this thread have said a few things that I haven't heard or seen much before. Specifically that killing apps could decrease battery life. When I first downloaded advanced task killer I tended to kill most things. I slowly backed off and now I've been watching what launches and what tends to come back and not kill those (mail apps, widgets, performance watchers, etc). The second is that not having a black background doesn't necessarily improve battery life. Makes sense considering I have icons everywhere on my screen.
@Shuggins - Thank you! That's exactly what I was looking for. I've downloaded it but now I have to, er charge my battery a bit before I can take a close look at it.
@jsmith8858 - Are you running setCPU? A couple days ago I noticed my battery running pretty hot. I stopped using setCPU and the battery cooled down a lot. I've used setCPU since them without the heat issue so I'm not sure what was going on.
Well during todays iteration I ran for about 12 hours (typical). I had a couple short phone calls, 2 email accounts syncing as well as other bg syncing processes. I did eat up 30% in an hour messing with a game. I'd probably have 13-14 hours if I didn't play anything (but if I didn't what's the point of the phone . Still, as much as I love it the screen is killing me. Guess there's nothing to do about it though (usually brightness is all the way down, turn it off when I'm not using it, using a darker background). I didn't kill any of my background processes today. I'm going to set up that Autostarts program and start auto-killing various programs tomorrow.
You can try using autokiller and art it to extreme, but I don't recommend this
Sent from my HTC Dream using XDA App
so i installed advanced task manager and for example i have google maps opend and i select it and kill it via advanced task manager BUT if i go in settings>aplications>running services google maps is still there whit 1 runing process......
is there any program that wil clouse for good every process a program has?
also sometimes if i check battery use, google maps is top of the list but if i check it in running proceses or whit advanced task manager google maps aint running
whit normal use my battery barely lasts me tru the day i had it 100% at 8 am now its 3 pm and i have 62% left with 15 mins of navigation use....thats all noting else
How long have you had the device? Mine lasts a day so far and I bought my NS on the 27th. I might have to calibrate the battery. You do not need the task killer. Nexus S has the manage data where you can force stop running services you don't need. Also Android does garbage collection which will manage your memory.
GB is supposed to improve battery life and given time you find your battery will improve.
Search on the threads for battery Calibration or goto
http://hemorrdroids.net/how-to-make-your-battery-last/
look at point 9.
Hope this helps
Tom
You need to get out of the iPhone Jailbreak poor memory management frame of mind where more free memory is a good thing.
Android (2.1 and higher) is very efficient at handling memory; it will do much better than you with a task manager will.
It's pointless to kill apps with a manual task manager, except in the very rare case that the app has run amok and is actually using up juice/cpu, because Android will just re-open those apps. You're actually hurting battery life (some will argue) by killing an app that you didn't need to because Android will just re-open it.
The mantra in Android is "free memory is wasted memory." In theory the apps are just sort of pre-loaded to have them ready and waiting to use in the background when you want them. They'll load faster that way. In the meantime, they're just sitting there not using any juice.
On your laptop/desktop you generally don't go into the task manager and kill everything off, there's no need to, and on the Androids it's the same thing. Leave it alone unless there's a really good reason to muck around with it.
That said, your battery life doesn't sound like most reports in the Nexus S community. My Nexus S, and the reports of others, is getting TERRIFIC battery life. This is by far the best battery life on any Android phone I've owned, and it's on a par with my iPhone 4 and 3GS devices.
Are you using Google Latitude? That seems to be a battery killer via Maps for some. Go into Maps settings and make sure it is off.
I use my phone a lot, it's on for hours each day with me reading twitter, text messages, looking up things on the web, dictating myself notes, etc, and I've only once even gotten the phone down to the 15% battery warning in 18 hour days.
funstuffalex said:
so i installed advanced task manager and for example i have google maps opend and i select it and kill it via advanced task manager BUT if i go in settings>aplications>running services google maps is still there whit 1 runing process......
is there any program that wil clouse for good every process a program has?
also sometimes if i check battery use, google maps is top of the list but if i check it in running proceses or whit advanced task manager google maps aint running
whit normal use my battery barely lasts me tru the day i had it 100% at 8 am now its 3 pm and i have 62% left with 15 mins of navigation use....thats all noting else
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
P.S. you mentioned NAVIGATION; you're aware that Navigation runs in the background if you haven't reached your destination yet, right? Even if you go to the home screen or put the phone to sleep, Navigation is still running. You have to reach your destination, or manually exit Navigation from one of the menu key options while it's in the foreground. Could that be your problem?
Also, you can grab an app from the Market called AutoStarts, and it will let you mark any app as not being allowed to start automatically after certain events, such as booting up, but once you manually start an app, it's back in the queue for Android's memory management.
If you really feel the need to have something doing more than Android's default memory management settings, on some phones and ROMs I've had good results with the app called Autokiller; this isn't a task killer, and it's poorly named for what it does, which is tweak the system defaults for free memory. Try it on strict or aggressive if you really feel the need. I haven't installed it on my Nexus S, no need to in my opinion.
i have the phone for 4 days now yea the first 2 days i used it alot and charged it like 3 times in 2 days(let it drop to 5% then charged it to 100%)
i am not using latitude, i know that part about navigation and i always check to make sure its cloused after im done whit it and my screen brigthneess is set to lowest
il give autostart a go it sounds good if it really dose wat it seaz it dose
it may also help to not have GPS enabled when not actually using an application that requires GPS
Is there a definitive list of current apps that drain battery (whether on purpose or accidentally) in the background?
I have about a dozen apps installed and one that seems to consistently drain battery in the background is the Bank of America app. I'll notice my drain increasing dramatically throughout the day after I've used the app. Many hours later, I will see a Force Close message for the app.
I don't know what it's doing in the background, but it doesn't show up in the Running Applications or Services (I checked after I used and closed the app). Nonetheless, the Force Close message appears 4-6 hours later.
Has anyone else noticed similar behavior with the Bank of America app?
First make sure you don't have unneeded sync connections running. They are the fastest way to kill your battery.
Go to Settings > Accounts & Sync - Turn off the sync connections you don't need, especially anything HTC.
Use a task manager like ADT to monitor what apps are running. Some apps, like the ones included in the ROM will just run again, so no point in killing them. You could also use a battery monitoring app.
I've optimized my phone per best practices on these forums, but I'm talking about specific applications that may be buggy. The FC on the Bank of America app is unusual because it didn't show up in the Running Applications list, yet was killed later.
Are these Force Close messages (I've seen them for Bank of America and Pandora so far) Gingerbread killing off the app for memory? It usually happens many hours after I've opened the application.
This is my method: I kill all programs using the built-in task manager. Then I head to Running Services and whatever is there, it's draining battery.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA Premium App
So i have been using my mozart for 2 years now, and i have probably ...200 apps by now. I install whatever
And it's obvious that this is causing a huge battery drain on my battery
on 3G i can probably only last 6 hours (without much usage)
on wifi 10 hours
If i continuously use it (web, game, social), probably 3 hours or less
So i understand i need to delete some apps but which app is draining the most amount of battery?
Location services are a BIG drain for me but lol at your background services and disable one at a time to find out for you. Apps don't drain unless they are active otherwise.
Sent from my HD7 using Board Express
The single largest drain that apps have on battery life is advertisements. Wait, display might be first and ads 2nd.
This is why the paid versions of some games are preferable to the free versions. The free, ad-supported versions are battery hogs.
I already turned off all background services... didnt help lol
Something must be running background without my understanding
Lol my brothers trophy (which he is not using now), i reset it and turned off most features (3G wifi GPS) and it can last a whole week without charge....
Even with 3G or wifi turned on, it still does very good with a fresh reset
If only my phone can run that much as well!
If you have the app "super battery drainer" that may be the cause :cyclops:
LL13-
Are you sure?
toothfish said:
So i have been using my mozart for 2 years now, and i have probably ...200 apps by now. I install whatever
And it's obvious that this is causing a huge battery drain on my battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Are you sure that your interpretation of the problem is correct? Maybe your now 2-year old battery just does not have the original capacity anymore, and that's the main reason you do not get the same run times as earlier?
I have 2 batteries, I don't use the other one very much. But when I do the result is the same.
Sent from my 7 Mozart T8698 using XDA Windows Phone 7 App
Unlike Android and WinMo, WP7 does not generally allow apps to run in the background. Those that do are under very strict limitations, intended to shield battery life.
You can see the list of apps that are able to do anything in the background at Settings -> Applications (pivot) -> Background Tasks. Unless an app is marked as "on", it won't run in the background. If you click Advanced, you'll also be able to see a list of apps that can run in the background under specific circumstances - for example, media apps may run in the background to play media, but if you stop the media playback or switch to another media source, the app will stop too.
That said, my HD7 is about as old as your Trophy, and is also losing battery life. I suspect a lot of it really is just due to the age of the battery, but some of the fancy new apps like LockWidgets2 are also huge battery hogs.
Hi,
First of all, this is a task killer question, and I know it has been preached again and again that task killers should not be used, which I do agree but need more clarification. I've googled and still can't find the answer to my question.
Current Phone : Huawei P9 Lite
Current Protected Apps Setting : Nova Launcher, Whatsapp, Inbox, Amplify, Greenify
So Huawei phones has this Phone Manager which is essentially a Task Killer and Memory Cleanup Utility to me.
To ensure that an app doesn't got killed after screen off, I need to add that app to be "Protected"
We all know that killing an app and have it restart/reload when being opened is bad(extra battery drain)
Hence my question:
Does killing an app, for example Chrome or Facebook, stops all it's background process after screen off? and thus stops battery use from that app? Previously before using Greenify, I have had incidences whereby Chrome kept my phone awake for the night if I didn't kill it.
Does this incident happens to you? As in, you trust android to manage memory, but having those app behind in background would simply just gives it a chance to run and keep your phone awake, such as Google Now, Maps(This! is notorious.....)
Looking to have 0.5% battery drain overnight if that is possible..