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Help! My TP kills background applications...

Whenever I try to run a background application (like playing music with Media Player) and I return to the home screen or I open another application through the start menu, my TC kills the background application after a few seconds. Does this also happen to any of you? Is it something I've done? As it is, I cannot multitask, and frankly it is very annoying.
Just for the record, I'm not closing applications with the X button (configured to minimize only), but this happens even if I switch applications without touching the X button.

mpmf said:
Whenever I try to run a background application (like playing music with Media Player) and I return to the home screen or I open another application through the start menu, my TC kills the background application after a few seconds. Does this also happen to any of you? Is it something I've done? As it is, I cannot multitask, and frankly it is very annoying.
Just for the record, I'm not closing applications with the X button (configured to minimize only), but this happens even if I switch applications without touching the X button.
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This happens to me as well. I especially find this troublesome, because I'm running SecondToday for some critical plugins, like PhoneAlarm. The OS always kills SecondToday when I'm trying to activesync or if I open a large program, like Copilot. It does this despite the fact I have over 100MB of free program memory. Very frustrating.
I've found that if I have more than 110MB free, it will leave most programs alone. It's when I get below 110MB that it starts to kill programs. Not sure why it's closing programs with so much free program memory... :-/
By the way, this is known WM behaviour. I'm just used to it doing it when I'm down to 4-6MB left.

This was a thorn in my side for almost a week until I found this fix:
Using a registry editor (I use Total Commander) go to
//registry / HKCU / software / HTC / Taskmanager / EnableAutoKill
Value by default is "1"
Change to "0"
Do a soft reset and your problem will be solved
There is also a way to decrease the threshold so that it will autokill when less than the default memory is remaining, but for me; when I have the most things running is likely to be the worst time for the phone to autokill my processes. That is why I would disable it altogether

It worked... Thanks!

I actually tried that tweak several days ago, but it did not solve the problem. It appears something else besides the HTC task manager was killing SecondToday. I suspect the actual OS, because it would happen ALWAYS when I tried to Activesync.
I've since scrapped SecondToday and am using another method to run PhoneAlarm on the actual Today screen, which is much more reliable. I needed a stable solution.

I thnk you can under task manager, assign those programs to the exclusive list, then it won't shut it down?

starstreak said:
I thnk you can under task manager, assign those programs to the exclusive list, then it won't shut it down?
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Click to collapse
Nah. That was the first thing I tried.
That won't keep WM from killing programs anyway, if the OS *thinks* it needs more memory.
This has always been a "feature" of WM -- I just don't understand why it's killing apps when I have >100MB of free program memory... ??

Advice please - need more speed!!

Hi, I've started this thread to get some advice from the members who are experienced in modding their phones.
As lots of G1 owners did, I greedily installed app after app until i was running low on space and ended up getting rid of a load. By this time my phone was running slowly anyway.
After recently playing with JF 1.5 then going to the official cupcake release, i have now only installed 24 apps and have 60mb free internal memory - so plenty of space for the browser/maps/youtube caches to grow.
My problem is understanding exactly how the system works though. How can I force each app to continue running in the background until I go back to it?
When first opening an app it takes anything from 0.5sec (dialer) to 17sec (maps) to go from the initial blank screen to actually drawing the app interface on the screen. This is fine when you first use an app, and if you go home then back to the app this is pretty much instant because the app is still running.
My problem however is the small number of apps the system allows to keep running before closing them, it only seems to be about 4 or so, and when you reopen an app you used a little while ago then you have to go through the painfully slow initial waiting while the app interface is drawn on the screen.
My questions really then are:
1. How many apps does the system keep running, and can this be increased? If so, then how & at what price?
2. Is there a way to force the system to always keep certain apps running and not close them (apps I use repeatedly througout the day, such as gmail, chompsms, browser)? I want the instant snappiness all the time for these apps.
3. Can I force the system to close other memory/processor hog apps as soon as I finish using them (maps, youtube, gallery)?
4. Will moving my apps and dalvik cache to a really fast class 8 microsd card help the speed of my phone in any way? Or is this just a way to increase free space on my phone memory?
Thanks in advance for any answers/advice/help!

17 sec for map? Something is wrong. I just opened my map and it took 2 sec to open up the map, another 1 sec to get my rough location. I was inside so I can't comment on getting exact GPS location but, if I had to guess, usually it's about 4-5 sec to lock onto that.
Now onto your question: Android manages it's own memory and there's no way of telling it how to manage it. You can do couple of things:
1) Get an "Open Overclocker" and increase the speed of you CPU to 384/528Mhz from stock 284/384Mhz
2) Get "Task Manager for root users" which will let you shut down programs that you don't use.
3) Reduce the number of widgets you have installed. In my experience, all of the news widgets run in the background even if you don't have them on your screen.
4) Clear you caches regularly (once a day). Very important.
5) Reboot your phone once a day.
Good luck.

borodin1 said:
17 sec for map? Something is wrong. I just opened my map and it took 2 sec to open up the map, another 1 sec to get my rough location. I was inside so I can't comment on getting exact GPS location but, if I had to guess, usually it's about 4-5 sec to lock onto that.
Now onto your question: Android manages it's own memory and there's no way of telling it how to manage it. You can do couple of things:
1) Get an "Open Overclocker" and increase the speed of you CPU to 384/528Mhz from stock 284/384Mhz
2) Get "Task Manager for root users" which will let you shut down programs that you don't use.
3) Reduce the number of widgets you have installed. In my experience, all of the news widgets run in the background even if you don't have them on your screen.
4) Clear you caches regularly (once a day). Very important.
5) Reboot your phone once a day.
Good luck.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've just opened my map again after rebooting the phone (and ensuring wifi is switched on, so there's no delay in downloading data for the map) and it took 7sec from hitting the icon until i had a map drawn on my screen. So perhaps the 17 sec was a one off. Even still, it feels painfully slow.
I will look into rooting my phone, and the over clocking and the TaskManager.
The only widgets i have installed are the google search bar, and a playlist.
Any thoughts on moving my apps/dalvik cache to a fast sd card? I think i read somewhere that a class 6 sd card is about the same speed as the internal memory in the G1, so would a class 8 card be even faster than this with regard to loading apps up?
Thanks for your advice so far!

There are multiple discussions about that and at this point it sounds like it does not matter where you caches are in terms of speed. Don't ask me why, I'm not that tech savy. Most people move caches to save space and to avoid clearing them every day. The beauty of this is that you can try it out and go back if you think it's not for you.
Also... look into what apps do you have on your phone, some of them may bog down system significantly. I know for sure that Phonebook from VoxMobile will, there are few others, can't remember which though, look for the thread about it from couple of months ago.
Good luck.

Thanks borodin1!

You do realize, unless the section of the map is cached, it has to be downloaded over your wireless connection right? (and cell networks has a very long latency.)
As to your questions 1-3, all running tasks are managed by the android system and non-active ones are terminated if memory is required by an active program. You cannot control this, but you can kill running apps if you want.
Also due to the slow nature of the terrible dalvik VM, you can't get much performance improvement by moving the dalvik-cache. I suppose you can get some boost by increasing the CPU speed, but the battery life will be much shorter.

billc.cn said:
You do realize, unless the section of the map is cached, it has to be downloaded over your wireless connection right? (and cell networks has a very long latency.)
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Which is why people move caches to the card and don't have that problem

but the map app does not use /cache. the latter is designed for non-transient temporary storage, not for big chunks of junk like the map.

[Q] Big delay incomming calls

Hi all,
I read a lot into this forum to improve a lot my old POLARIS but I have an issue with incomming calls that I don't find a solution yet. I'm unsing a NAND installation of the "Not So Super Froyo" version with 2.6.25 kernel. I use Rogue Tools to overclock to 480Mhz moreless.
When I receive a call, my Polaris is iddle until two or three tones from the other person, after this, the phone begins to awake and my tone begin to sound but, unfortunately, so late, because the other person hang up the phone Anybody knows about a solution to speed up this process? The phone goes very fast into the menus and the other functions (faster than Wm6.5 that I have installed before).
Thanks in advance to everybody for your support.

hi there...i had same issue...but no one oulnt give me an answer...
sincerly..buy a new phone with Android..
i took an Iphone 4..
you will never solve that problem...

...............

esteras said:
When I receive a call, my Polaris is iddle until two or three tones from the other person, after this, the phone begins to awake and my tone begin to sound but, unfortunately, so late, because the other person hang up the phone Anybody knows about a solution to speed up this process? The phone goes very fast into the menus and the other functions (faster than Wm6.5 that I have installed before).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Polaris has a very small amount of RAM by today's standard. Especially in Android, there are lots of apps running in the background. What happens with Android is that when it needs to start a process and there isn't enough RAM, it will start killing background processes until it can launch the process. This can take a looong while.
So when a call comes in, there needs to be several processes running in order to display the incoming call screen, play the ringtone, etc. If the phone already has many processes started it is going to take a long time to kill those apps and process the incoming call.
You can verify if this is indeed the problem. When you receive a call and there is a big delay to start ringing and display the caller id screen, and the caller hangs up, call yourself (or have someone else call the phone) soon after that. The second call should ring much quicker.

Thanks hobbes, I suppose that but it has a difficult solution :-(

If that is the case there are several things you can try.
Use a lighter ROM. I haven't used the ROM you mentioned, but many ROMs come loaded with lots of apps. In android, many apps will start just by merely being installed on the device. Remove the apps you don't need ever, they are taking up storage and possibly using up RAM. Personally I found the Froyo install downloaded via atools be quite clean without lots of junks. For bare minimum, you can get the CyanogenMod Barebones.
Get autostarts from market. In android apps can respond to system events and start themselves as a result. With autostarts you can disable apps responding to those events, but not entirely disable the apps. A good choice if you want to keep apps that you occasionally need, and you can always start them via launcher. Some Google apps are notoriously bad at this -- they always find a way to start themselves even if you kill it by hand via the settings->applications menu.
If you are using cyanogenmod base rom, you can try enabling swap or compcache. My understanding is that it can allow you starting more apps and keep them in RAM since the memory is swapped or compressed. Android will probably won't kill them as much or as frequently. I never tried it myself though.
Good luck.

Thanks hobbes,
It was very helpful.

try with latest 2.6.32 kernel and cyanogen mod as described here
i had the same problem with previous setup
You can try to use Autokiller from the market, the best memory manager ever too

[Q] Manual Ram Reset?

Let me begin by saying I have a rooted Infuse with Infused 2.2.3 Gingerbread and the Infusion Kernel.
As I use the Infuse over the course of the week, apps get started up and slowly my memory goes down. I can shut off some apps manually, but some refuse to get turned off, even by ram clearing apps and manual rooted actions.
Whenever I want to speed my phone up again and free up Ram, I have to reset my phone.
My question is how would I go about clearing the ram on my phone back to the 'phone-on' starting position, when my apps have yet to be activated?
I have used Advanced Task Killer to attempt this and it does not permanently close apps. I have also used Autokiller Memory Module to close programs, but they also do not stay closed (Is there something to Chuck Norris mode?).
Does anyone know a way to clear the ram back to that point? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Check this out to know more about Android memory management
You do NOT need any memory managers to manage. Let android manage memory.

Please actually read!
Please read my statement before you answer.
Once again, my phone's internal memory manager works FINE, but it does over time get bogged down by too many apps trying to start at once.
My ONLY question: Can I reset the phone's memory back to a reset state without resetting my phone?
Thanks for anyone who knows an answer to this!

sonomar said:
Please read my statement before you answer.
Once again, my phone's internal memory manager works FINE, but it does over time get bogged down by too many apps trying to start at once.
My ONLY question: Can I reset the phone's memory back to a reset state without resetting my phone?
Thanks for anyone who knows an answer to this!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Read again:
Apps don't start at once, nor compete. Based on usage of apps, OS loads them into RAM, and keeps them there. The amount of RAM to be always left free is set initially. Rest of the RAM is filled here. Apps filled like this do NOT use CPU. They use CPU only when they are invoked, or backgrounded.
Say you are done working with an app, and use the exit function in it. It just signals OS its end, but the app is not cleaned out of RAM. It is kept until it is invoked again, or pushed out until more free RAM than available is needed or when pushed out manually using task manager.
When any app wants more RAM than what is available, the preloaded ones are pushed out, and this app is loaded.
Too many apps compete for CPU and memory when a user starts hitting "home" button instead of "back" button. Home button pushes apps to background wherein the back button signals u r out of the app. This sets the app to be pushed out of RAM as needed.
I use pretty many apps, and sometimes go on for over a week without bothering to use any task manager to clear out RAM nor noticing any lag.
And to be specific to your question:
There is no time like initial start time until the phone is rebooted again. If u give the phone some time to settle after u reboot it, u can see apps being to memory, be it that they are invoked by you or not. Even if ATK or any task killer kills them, OS respawns them over time based on ur usage of them.

Thanks, I'll try pushing the back button more often and see if that works...though for google apps that usually isn't allowed.
The problem is that even with Android's automatic system, I'm still being given "Low Memory" warnings on all my apps within a few days of rebooting.
I dunno, I think that currently the only real solution is to reboot my phone bi-daily, but I really was hoping there was a way to reset the OS ram without a full reboot.
Again, thanks anyway!

sonomar said:
Thanks, I'll try pushing the back button more often and see if that works...though for google apps that usually isn't allowed.
The problem is that even with Android's automatic system, I'm still being given "Low Memory" warnings on all my apps within a few days of rebooting.
I dunno, I think that currently the only real solution is to reboot my phone bi-daily, but I really was hoping there was a way to reset the OS ram without a full reboot.
Again, thanks anyway!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe u have too many apps open. Not sure what's the case on ur phone. Personally I never faced this low memory issue so far.
By the way, I froze up certain system apps (in tibu) (even deleted some) that I don't use, like Google search, etc cos these r always loaded and I never use them.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I997 using XDA App

I have the same problem
sonomar said:
Let me begin by saying I have a rooted Infuse with Infused 2.2.3 Gingerbread and the Infusion Kernel.
As I use the Infuse over the course of the week, apps get started up and slowly my memory goes down. I can shut off some apps manually, but some refuse to get turned off, even by ram clearing apps and manual rooted actions.
Whenever I want to speed my phone up again and free up Ram, I have to reset my phone.
My question is how would I go about clearing the ram on my phone back to the 'phone-on' starting position, when my apps have yet to be activated?
I have used Advanced Task Killer to attempt this and it does not permanently close apps. I have also used Autokiller Memory Module to close programs, but they also do not stay closed (Is there something to Chuck Norris mode?).
Does anyone know a way to clear the ram back to that point? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have a tablet android 4.1. After some time I don't have runing apps and I don't have free memory. I don't have running tasks, I don't have cashed tasks. And I don't have free memory. After this critical point the tablet needs restart. Of course after restart everything works fine, for some hours. After sleep the above critical point comes quicker... The problem seems to me like driver or software problem but I can't be sure... I m searching for a similar solution for an app that can without restart, restart my ram, clear completely my ram, not task killing because at the end I don't have tasks to kill... It looks like somehow a garbage ram is created after some time, that kills my ram. It looks like virus but it is not virus as the device is new and I have check for viruses...

Just get the app Startup Manager, stop all user apps (except some that you do want to run), apply, and reboot

Cache cleaner free from the market. I use cache cleaner ng.
sent from outer space.

Quick and easy approach - use Fast Reboot.
Brings the phone to like-rebooted condition... in about 5 seconds.
Normally don't need it, but occasionally phone gets bogged down and this clears it right up.
Free program.
Another step - a little more work - Find the programs that are running with a service and get rid of them if you don't need them... or use Gemini Apps manager to block auto-start. Google Maps is a good one to block auto start of.

Whatsapp Re-launching

Hey everyone,
This is intended to people who use Whatsapp or apps that show similar behavior.
If Whatsapp is in the background app list, I can easily hold the back button, access the list, and click on it and it will resume from where I was.
However, if the background is still in the background app list, and I clock on the Whatsapp live tile, the app has to re-launch itself instead of resuming from where I left it.
Is that a Whatsapp malfunction or normal WP7 behaviour? Other apps do not behave like that so I am guessing it's whatsapp.
I only had my Lumia 900 for a week and still new to WP7.
Your help/comment/feedback will be appreciated.
Thank you.

clicking on the app-tile will force every app to relaunch (except some built-in "apps" like your browser and so on)

roqstr said:
clicking on the app-tile will force every app to relaunch (except some built-in "apps" like your browser and so on)
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Click to collapse
I find that a bit odd don't you think? What for?

It's a limitation of Windows Phone right now. I think it's mostly done to reduce the amount of background processes running and hence will give better battery life.
Hopefully this will change with WP8!

Actually, that's mostly incorrect. It is the default behavior of WP7, and the reason for that behavior is to allow the user to re-launch an app that has become hung in some way (since apps can trap teh Back button, it's entirely possible to make an app that the OS provides no other way for the user to exit from). In theory (I haven't tried it myself), it's possible to make a configuration change that causes the default "launch" behavior to be resume, rather than restart.
Background processes are completley irrelevent, because WP7 has no (significant) process limit and does not let apps run in the background (consuming battery) anyhow. Backgrounded apps are fully suspended; they use RAM but if another program needs it, the suspended app will be tombstoned (think of it as "hibernated"), the process ended, and the RAM freed.

Interesting although a bit annoying since the app takes 5 seconds to relaunch and fetch messages although the messages have been received and notifications have appeared on the top.