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i use advance task killer and set it to auto kill every hour...but ive been reading everywhere that people say not to use task killer. whats ur opinion on this?
Don't use them. Kick the habit. Get the monkey off your back. Go cold turkey. Just say no.
It's okay, in my opinion. The key is to use it safely (that means not using an auto kill). I use advanced task killer as well. I have the security set to High, and I have established an ignore list (for applications that need to remain open to provide me updates, like Gmail, Market, Clock - for alarms, Yahoo Messenger, etc). Setting the security to high ensures that processes aren't killed when you kill everything else. I put a widget on the homescreen that kills, when you select it. I kill everything whenever I put my phone down. In my experience, not using a TK gives me too much lag for my taste. I also noticed quicker battery drain without a TK. This is my personal experience and I strongly recommend doing a couple of days both WITH a TK and WITHOUT a TK. Remember, if you do continue using a TK, do so carefully. Review this article for a little more insight. Good luck
I use it and personally have noticed increase battery life. I set it to autokill every hour but i have left security at high and all the applications i need running plus widgets that need to keep updating, market, and alarm i have put on the ignore list. As long as you do this it should be helpful to you.
SiL3nTKiLL said:
i use advance task killer and set it to auto kill every hour...but ive been reading everywhere that people say not to use task killer. whats ur opinion on this?
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They are so many robot-lovers out there and they will claim Android is the best. They will tell you the OS is so advanced that you don't have to worry about the background processes. Well, don't just believe them. Try a task killer yourself and you'll find out if it's good for you.
For me, a task killer is definitely necessary.
(1) You need a task killer to kill those AT&T crappy processes. Things like AT&T hot spot, AT&T navigator will start automatically every time you start your phone. If you don't root your phone, you need to kill them manually. I've tested it, those stupid, useless processes drain your battery like crazy.
(2) To kill other auto-sync, auto-update apps. A lot of the app use background syncing or updating. If you don't configure them correctly, chances are they will run in the background and drain your battery.
I have used two different Android phones. Without task killer, I would probably have a battery for less than half of a day. With task killer, I can at least last a whole day.
PS, In case you didn't notice, I hate the way Android handles multitasking. I like the idea of letting the OS to handle background processes. But the job it is doing right now is just horrible.
This is my first android phone and i do no use a task killer. i started the first few days using one and then stopped after reading alot of things saying not to. i may try one again and use it only for things i do not want running
Hi,
im unclear about how to close running apps....some have "exit" buttons from their menu...but most don't...and I find that a lot of things are left running in the back ground....
How do I close apps so the list is clear?
rpavich said:
Hi,
im unclear about how to close running apps....some have "exit" buttons from their menu...but most don't...and I find that a lot of things are left running in the back ground....
How do I close apps so the list is clear?
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Click to collapse
advanced task killer would do it. But you do not need to. Android saves apps in their running state, but they do not consume resources unless active. (other than things that autoupdate, like weather, email, etc.)
If apps are keeping alive things like gps, wifi, bluetooth etc, when theyre not in use, then yes use a task killer for those to save battery power, or set up tasks or profiles to switch things on/off at the times you want them. Tasker is good for that. Any other apps are fine to be left alone (unless you are tethered and they are costing you money of course).
Thanks for the replies...I have tasker on my phone...I love it.
If it's not really hurting anything to have these apps idling...then I really don't care...I'm getting about 9 hours of battery....so all is well there....
i dont use any tasker. you can find the running apps under settings'applications'manag applications,running applications,
*Disclaimer* This is all from a personal experience and testing/research from a long time android user, what I have discovered over time and has helped me and some friends. This will work whether your rooted OR not. I kept it as basic as I can so everyone can benefit. If you dont like what you read and disagree, or want to add something PM me, Ill change/add and give credit to you. Hopefully, this can grow with the community.
*Rooted Section Will be Added*
*When I charge my battery I usually drain it all the way down or as much as i can (around 20% left) then charge plugged in till green, then power down and charge for another hour or so. Not sure if this matters or not but seems to help me out try it!*
This guide will help you if your rooted or non-rooted, all the apps I talk about I honestly have no ties to the devs. I don't use any SUPER AWESOME AMAZING BATTERY SAVER 5000 apps or anything like that. Those mostly just turn ur radios off and on and kill apps in the background. In my experience a lot of them cause syncing issues with my e-mail and other notifications. I like to receive my information instantly not have an app waiting for me to turn my screen on to check for updates.
About my personal setup: Basically, I want my phone to last me all day but still perform well with a heavy use, WITHOUT needing to constantly change settings to save battery. With what I have here Im able to keep my Sensation running for a full day of moderate-heavy use (7:30am to around 10pm) with its STOCK battery (Did damn well on my Evo 4G too). Days of very minor use Ive gone into the second day with 60% + battery. Yes, I use all my home screens and have a good amount of widgets, I love sense and its widgets. I play games, surf the web, do a lot of texting, listen to a lot of music, decent amount of fbing and email, usually take a few pictures a day. Half my day is wifi/other is mobile data.
Here goes the real basics, mostly common sense here not trying to insult anyone. Feel free to browse thru it quick (green text) if your not totally new to the android scene, whats after it will be a good read for noobs and vets.
*I use the power control widget, make getting to a lot of settings quicker. Why waste battery digging thru menus?*
Basics:
-Screen brightness: (duh ) these pretty screens eat battery brighter=quicker drain naturally and from my experience leaving it on Auto Brightness kills more battery too. Each time your phone pulls information from the sensor to decide on how bright it should adjust itself too.
-GPS: If GPS is on it should not effect battery unless an app is using it and you see the GPS icon on your notification bar. I noticed a very slight increase in mA discharge when i had it enabled, to be safe leave it off if you dont use it extremely frequently.
Location thru mobile networks: Not to hard on battery. I leave mine on it does add drain but it takes away from my weather widgets updating when Im traveling.
-Bluetooth: Moderate battery drain. I honestly don't use it at all myself but if you do try your best to keep it off when not in use.
-Wifi: Android has gotten a lot better at managing wifi over the past few years. It doesn't drain that bad on battery and it shuts off/on periodically on its own when screen is off depending on whats using it.
Google Back-Up: Takes a little juice here and there no biggie. I dont use it just because I like to fresh install my apps when I try a new rom, run into less problems that way.
2G/3G/4G: This varies phone to phone, the slower speed the better battery life. If you know your not going to be using 4G for a while turn it off. I leave mine on 4G or wifi all day with my sensation. When I had Sprint and my Evo I would leave it off most of the time. Depending on your carrier and how their data works this is a big one. T-Mobile seems to handle well, Sprint and Verizon's 4G Ive seen eat an insane amount of battery.
Sync/Background Data: I lumped them together because sync is pretty much reliant on background data. These kill a lot of your battery in general. It syncs your apps (email, facebook, google data, contacts, etc.), the periodic checks your apps do to check for and download new emails and notifications, using background data (data still transmits when screens off). I always leave these on and still manage great battery life, I like things instant if I wanted to wait Id just wait till i got in front of a PC. Sync and Background data are the settings most battery saving apps control because they really can help your battery if you turn it off. You can control what core apps sync in settings>accounts and sync. Or the power widget that 95% of android phones have has it on there. I recommend minimizing the amount of apps you allow background data with, example: WeatherBug first launch it asks if it can automatically update itself in the background for apps were thats not necessary hit no.
Radio/Airplane Mode: Pretty self explanatory, turns off your connection to your wireless provider. No point in ever turning it off in my eyes, your phones no longer a phone.
What has really helped me with my battery life (non-basics):
There is a lot to be said when it comes down to 2.2+ android phones and whether they need a task killer anymore or not. Since Ive had a lot of android phones and a few now that are 2.2+ Ive done a lot of testing. I usually go about a 2 weeks on one idea or new task killer and keep a close eye on battery drainage using Battery Monitor Widget, free app in the market. It tells you exactly how much of your battery is being drained without killing battery itself. Each phone/rom settles at a different average mA lower the better. In my experience if I can keep my phone anywhere under 100mA when idle im doing good. This held true on both the Evo 4G and my Sensation. Some ASOP roms i could get down to the 30's but for sense under 100mA is good. Keep in mind you will get the occasionally spike here and there its just android and/or apps in the background. You can view the a chart of the battery data in Battery Monitor.
Instead of boring you guys with each task killer Ive used and its results, Ill just get down to what I found out in the end.
Basically, the way android 2.2+ works it really isn't necessary to run a task killer it does a decent job removing apps from memory when you need more memory. But at the same time I found running a task killer periodically (BUT not killing frequently used apps) results in a lower average mA drain leading to overall better battery life.
The best application I have used has to go Automatic Task Killer , trust me Ive used a lot from the top free ones to a few of the more popular paid ones. What this task killer does is kill a selection of apps you allow it too every time your phones screen shuts off and goes idle. On Automatic Task Killer's first boot your shown a screen of every application that could at some point run in the background on your phone. This part sucks a little bit but it is worth it, you need to select which of the apps you want to allow it to kill automatically. It does not kill foreground apps the ones you currently have open on the screen aka a browser or a game. Example your playing NFS: Shift and your boss walks by so you quickly pause and hit the power button turning off the screen, next time you turn the screen on it will kill all other allowed background apps but your game will still be up front and center.
Now the trick is to go thru and set it to kill apps you know your phone won't automatically just restart or you don't use 90% of the time. So don't select things like Dialer, Contacts, Clock, Calendar, Messages or apps you constantly use/check such as a third party SMS app or your main E-Mail Client or third party keyboards (various by person and what you use most). Letting the app automatically kill those is just going to lead to worse battery life because your phone will just restart it each time leading to more CPU cycles (not what you want and part of the reason some consider task killers bad things).
Also, when using any task killer and killing the proper apps sense seems runs smoother, a big deal with sense 3.0.
Re-calibrate Battery: After you flash a new rom or start using a new battery, you should use your recovery (CWM or other) to Wipe Battery Stats. Before you do this make sure your battery is at 100% and has been on the charger for over an hour with the fully charged green led on. This will allow your device to better drain your battery and can really help battery life.
So hopefully with a little messing around you can get a good setup where your phone lasts you all day without having to constantly keep changing settings and watching your battery life. All while everything stays syncing and instant. Hope this helps!
Thanks to people who have contributed:
-JadeSoturi
*ROOT Section (now that we have s-off )
Everything posted above can be done on any rom, rooted or none. There has been a lot of posts on "freezing apps" that you dont need or typically use, which does in fact really help battery life. Since, we (by we i mean sensation users) now have a permanent root this is my tiny second part of the guide for rooted devices.
I dont freeze my apps I prefer them to be gone for good if its something I dont see myself using or its bloat that came with my phone/rom. Since 98% of us will be using custom roms now this usually isnt an issue since most dev's r good at what they do and remove all the bs we dont need or normally use. Still there is some apps we may not want on our phones so for that I use SystemApp Remover . Its a great App for people who dont want to have to worry about going in manually and getting rid of system apps.
Its just basically an Uninstaller that allows you to access any and every app on the phone for you to uninstall (thats y roots needed). For me I just go in an drop the apps I know i wont use. A lot of roms come with carrier add-ons and such, those I normally delete as well as a few HTC sense widgets and apps I see no need for. It will free up space and increase your phones battery life with most things you delete.
Now, be careful. You are prompted upon opening SystemApp Remover that messing in system apps is dangerous and it is. If your not sure what something is DONT touch it, simply do a google search or ask around to see if its safe to remove first.
Nice to have needed guides posted. Hopefully someone will see fit to add this to the Stickies. Thanks.
no problem glad to give back.
itd be nice to have my first sticky, maybe when some people start noticing results and the thread picks up
Leaving GPS on has NO impact on battery life unless you have an app that is actively using it (you will notice the little satellite icon in the notification bar).
Thanks your this what is the automatic task killer you used because there are a few when I search on the market and wasn't sure which one to get?
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using XDA Premium App
TheBiles said:
Leaving GPS on has NO impact on battery life unless you have an app that is actively using it (you will notice the little satellite icon in the notification bar).
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Click to collapse
Updated OP. I do still notice slightly higher mA when it is enabled even if theres no apps using it
Thanks for the info, I'm trying out the automatic task killer to see how it affects my battery life.
Oh, and I didn't even read the bottom of your post. DO NOT USE TASK KILLERS WITH ANDROID. PERIOD.
TheBiles said:
Oh, and I didn't even read the bottom of your post. DO NOT USE TASK KILLERS WITH ANDROID. PERIOD.
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No offense bro, but you should read his entire post before you start ripping it apart. It looks like he put a lot of effort into it. He explains his reasoning for the task killer with evidence and it makes sense.
Thanks OP, I'm using your suggestions already. Will update soon.
moh0 said:
No offense bro, but you should read his entire post before you start ripping it apart. It looks like he put a lot of effort into it. He explains his reasoning for the task killer with evidence and it makes sense.
Thanks OP, I'm using your suggestions already. Will update soon.
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With more evidence than the article I posted? Yeah, right.
TheBiles said:
Oh, and I didn't even read the bottom of your post. DO NOT USE TASK KILLERS WITH ANDROID. PERIOD.
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I address the fact that android doesnt need a task killer but if you read the whole thing automatic task killer lets you choose which apps to kill, leaving out worry of killing system apps that just restart.
Also, this is for battery life and performance, my battery's mA drains slower when i use a task killer for non system apps as well as keeps Sense 3.0 running smoother. I have had sense bog down on me a few times when not keeping a task killer handy.
It isnt necessary to have have a task killer and in the average users hands it can cause more harm than good. But this threads helping to school people on a way for better battery life using a safer method than a BASIC KILL ALL task killer.
Lastly, why did they include a task killer with my android if they dont think we need one?
TheBiles said:
Oh, and I didn't even read the bottom of your post. DO NOT USE TASK KILLERS WITH ANDROID. PERIOD.
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Wow, that was helpful. What a waste of an attempt to incite a useless forum war.
@ bobzoz
Nicely put, it will definitely help the newbies to android and made me think twice about a couple of things even though I'm on my 4th android phone.
bobzoz said:
I address the fact that android doesnt need a task killer but if you read the whole thing automatic task killer lets you choose which apps to kill, leaving out worry of killing system apps that just restart.
Also, this is for battery life and performance, my battery's mA drains slower when i use a task killer for non system apps as well as keeps Sense 3.0 running smoother. I have had sense bog down on me a few times when not keeping a task killer handy.
It isnt necessary to have have a task killer and in the average users hands it can cause more harm than good. But this threads helping to school people on a way for better battery life using a safer method than a BASIC KILL ALL task killer.
Lastly, why did they include a task killer with my android if they dont think we need one?
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Click to collapse
The same reason HTC and T-Mobile included all of that other BLOATWARE crap.
dazzlet said:
Thanks your this what is the automatic task killer you used because there are a few when I search on the market and wasn't sure which one to get?
Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using XDA Premium App
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Updated OP with links, good call
TheBiles said:
The same reason HTC and T-Mobile included all of that other BLOATWARE crap.
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Click to collapse
It's made by Google, not HTC or T-mobile.
Im just sharing how with people how I get good battery life. Trying to help out, if you dont agree with my method than just dont use it and ignore this thread.
bobzoz said:
Its made by Google, not HTC or T-mobile.
Im just sharing how with people how I get good battery life. Trying to help out, if you dont agree with my method than just dont use it and ignore this thread.
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That looks like part of HTC's Sense. You definitely won't find that in AOSP Android.
TheBiles said:
That looks like part of HTC's Sense. You definitely won't find that in AOSP Android.
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Click to collapse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Sense
Apps section.
Im not trying to have a battle man just ignore the thread if you dont agree with it. Easy stuff
bobzoz said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Sense
Apps section.
Im not trying to have a battle man just ignore the thread if you dont agree with it. Easy stuff
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Click to collapse
Wow, you cited Wikipedia. Credible info there!
I'm only trying to help out the other forum users who are being mislead. I've been through a lot of Android devices and spent a lot of time focusing on things like this, and I know what I'm talking about.
Edit: And the only task killer you will find made by Google is the one within Android OS itself. Go download an AOSP build of Android with the latest Google Apps and let me know when you find a task-killer app.
TheBiles said:
Wow, you cited Wikipedia. Credible info there!
I'm only trying to help out the other forum users who are being mislead. I've been through a lot of Android devices and spent a lot of time focusing on things like this, and I know what I'm talking about.
Edit: And the only task killer you will find made by Google is the one within Android OS itself. Go download an AOSP build of Android with the latest Google Apps and let me know when you find a task-killer app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Im just sharing what works for me and like i said in the OP ive been doing this for a long time too. If you want to continue coming at me please do it thru a PM.
Hi all, ive had my play for a few months now and im having problems with battery life as most seem to have had at some point. Ive tried a bigger battery but it turns the phone into something from the 90s lol....so i then tried some task killers but ive noticed they seem to kill a few tasks, then 5 mins later the tasks have started themselves up again so i spend my time going in and out of the task killer hitting optimise which is a total pain and im thinking pointless? Ive heard these newer builds of android manage tasks anyway but i think there are still some tasks/processes i could do without... My question is, would it just be better to uninstall the task manager and then manually force close tasks/processes i dont need and if i do do this will they stay closed/killed till i manually open them again or reboot, or will they automatically restart themselves? Im mainly talking about preloaded stuff i dont need like timescape and data monitor and other battery eating rubbish.
Rooting is an option but now being on 2.3.3 and awaiting 2.3.4 it seems like alot of agro just to clear some running bloatware (downgrading to uk generic firmware 2.2 then gingerbreak then upgrading then removing bloatware then reinstalling removed bloatware for every update, sigh)... If the damn tasks would just stay closed im sure my battery would last a bit longer...
So any difference force closing tasks manually vs task killers and would it help with battery life?
This is a great phone with 2 flaws one is battery life the second is small internal memory... Rooting seems to help fix these problems from what i have read. Why cant sony release a small app/program to let us clear the bloatware without the hassle of rooting.
This has turned into more of a rant, whoops!
Any ideas...?
Sent from my R800i using XDA App
Right understand this. There is no point closing apps or using task killers in android. It makes no sence. This isnt windows, android handles ram in a totally diffrent way to windows, In windows the more free ram you have the faster the pc/phone right? well it's the oposite in android, the less free ram the better, It means android is managing it's own workload, unlike windows application are split into 2 catagories, Applications and process, Now android can have an application running in the background but it will freeze the active process if your not using it, It will keep the ram that application is using a keep it save, so when you relaunch the app it's fast and smooth, Kill the app and you may reclaim the ram but you have to wait for the application to reload and restart. I think life hacker tells it better then me. Read this!
"Android Task Killers Explained: What They Do and Why You Shouldn’t Use Them
Android task killers improve your phone's performance while also boosting battery life—or at least that's the much-debated promise. Here's a look at how task killers actually work, when you should (or shouldn't) use them, and what you can do instead.
A task killer is an app from which you can (sometimes automatically) force other apps to quit, the hope being that the fewer apps you have running in the background, the better your Android's performance and battery life will be. Not everyone agrees with this premise, though. The argument about whether task killers are effective rages all over the internet: Android forums are full of threads with constant bickering and conflicting anecdotal experience, making it difficult for most users to make sense of the situation.
Below, I'm going to dig into the truth about Android task killers: that apart from maybe some older phones, Android manages tasks fairly well on its own, and how task killers present quite a few problems. I'll also take a look at the rare occasions when they're useful, and offer some alternatives you should try to improve your phone's performance and battery-life quirks.
Before we dive in, here's a quick overview of how Android handles process management by default.
How Android Manages Processes
In Android, processes and Applications are two different things. An app can stay "running" in the background without any processes eating up your phone's resources. Android keeps the app in its memory so it launches more quickly and returns to its prior state. When your phone runs out of memory, Android will automatically start killing tasks on its own, starting with ones that you haven't used in awhile.
The problem is that Android uses RAM differently than, say, Windows. On Android, having your RAM nearly full is a good thing. It means that when you relaunch an app you've previously opened, the app launches quickly and returns to its previous state. So while Android actually uses RAM efficiently, most users see that their RAM is full and assume that's what's slowing down their phone. In reality, your CPU—which is only used by apps that are actually active—is almost always the bottleneck.
Why Task Killers Are (Usually) Bad News
Apps like Advanced Task Killer, the most popular task killer in the Market, act on the incorrect assumption that freeing up memory on an Android device is a good thing. When launched, it presents you with a list of "running" apps and the option to kill as many as you want. You can also hit the Menu button to access a more detailed "Services" view, that lists exactly which parts of each application are "running", how much memory they take up, and how much free memory is available on your phone. This set-up implies that the goal of killing these apps is to free up memory. Nowhere on the list does it mention the number of CPU cycles each app is consuming, only the memory you'll free by killing it. As we've learned, full memory is not a bad thing—we want to watch out for the CPU, the resource that actually slows down your phone and drains your battery life.
Thus, killing all but the essential apps (or telling Android to kill apps more aggressively with the "autokill" feature) is generally unnecessary. Furthermore, it's actually possible that this will worsen your phone's performance and battery life. Whether you're manually killing apps all the time or telling the task killer to aggressively remove apps from your memory, you're actually using CPU cycles when you otherwise wouldn't—killing apps that aren't doing anything in the first place.
In fact, some of the processes related to those apps will actually start right back up, further draining your CPU. If they don't, killing those processes can cause other sorts of problems—alarms don't go off, you don't receive text messages, or other related apps may force close without warning. All in all, you're usually better off letting your phone work as intended—especially if you're more of a casual user. In these instances, a task killer causes more problems than it solves.
What You Should Do Instead
That said, not all apps are created equal. Many of you have used task killers in the past and actually found that after freeing up memory, your phone works a bit better. It's more likely that this is because you've killed a bad app—one that was poorly coded, and (for example) keeps trying to connect to the internet even when it shouldn't. Any performance increase you experience is more likely because you killed the right app, not because you freed up loads of memory (or, in many cases, it's just placebo). Instead of killing all those apps, find out which ones are actually causing the problems. If you really know what you're doing, you may benefit from using a task killer to stop the one or two inefficient-but-loved apps on your phone.
Note, however, that this is still a contested notion. A lot of developers (including ROM builder extraordinaire, Cyanogen) will not even look at your bug reports if you're using a task killer. In this humble blogger's opinion, your best bet is to stay away from regular task killer usage entirely. If you absolutely have to have that one battery-killing app on your phone, though, kill away—just be aware that when you experience a recurring Android bug later on, the task killer may be at fault. Of course, you can just stop using it to determine whether that is or isn't the case.
With task killers firmly in the better-off-without box, there are still a number of other things you can do to fill the void, improving your performance and battery life:
Watch for Runaway Processes: Previously mentioned Watchdog is a slightly different kind of task killer, in the sense that instead of telling you your phone's out of memory and it's time to go on a task killing spree, it alerts you when the occasional app starts eating up CPU for no reason. You can then kill the app with Watchdog and get on with your day (though honestly, at that point, I usually just reboot my phone). If it happens often with the same app, however, you may want to move on to the next step.
Uninstall Bad Apps: Worse than the occasional, one-time runaway app is the poorly coded, always-eating-CPU app. If you find (with Watchdog or through some other method) that a particular app seems to drain CPU and battery life whenever it's running, confirm your suspicions by uninstalling it and seeing what happens. If an app is causing problems on your phone, you're probably better off without it.
We advocate rooting Android devices a lot at Lifehacker, but that's because it really is as useful as everyone says it is. You can over- and underclock your phone with SetCPU, install custom ROMs that noticeably improve performance and battery life, and use the ever-useful, crapware-thwarting Autostarts utility to stop apps from starting up on your phone in the first place. Honestly, with one-click rooting apps like previously mentioned Universal Androot available for most phones, rooting only takes a few minutes to do, and you'll be much happier for it.
Update: Many of you also mentioned the root-only app Titanium Backup, which will help you get rid of the pre-installed crapware that comes on most phones, which are one of the worst offenders of phone lag. Thanks to all of you that sent this in!
Seriously, Use the Power Control Widget: This may sound ridiculously obvious, but if you aren't already using some form of the Power Control widget, you should. The things that drain the most battery on any smartphone are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, and your screen. Turn them off when you don't need them and you'll find that you can eke out considerably more battery life.
Charge Your Phone: Even more obvious yet rarely heeded advice: Charge your phone often. This isn't as hard as it sounds for most people. While you're sometimes stuck going out for 14 hours with no place to charge your phone, the majority of us spend our days in our homes, our offices, and other places rife with electrical outlets. Buy a few extra chargers and place them strategically around your home, car, and office. Whenever you're sitting around at home or working away at your desk, you can use that time to dock your phone and give it some extra juice without worrying about battery or performance drains. Before I upgraded to Android 2.2, my battery life was pretty awful, but just having a charger in my car and next to my computer made a huge difference in how often I got the dreaded "low battery" message."
Theres no way to remove the bloatware without root access. I rooted my xplay yesterday using the new zergrush method, you dont need to downgrade or anything you just type in a bunch of stuff in the command promt and its done.
Just to add on to AndroHero's post. In short, Task Killers actually REDUCE your battery life. Just leave it alone, turn off bluetooth and wifi, etc when youre not using them, keep your text message conversations low, and your email inbox clear. Thats about all you can do.
Also the battery life may be related to your coverage area. My phone will last all weekend at home, but is dead in 8 hours at my office due to all the interference and poor cell service coverage, its always searching for signal.
Very interesting thank you for the detailed explanation and tips. Im gonna remove my task killer and try watchdog if i can, to keep an eye on my cpu. I am also going to look into rooting my phone, its just the constant android updates and horror storys of rooted phones with removed bloatware bricking after OTA thats putting me off.
I can understand how having an app in memory ready to go keeps your phone quick (in the same way a cookie in your browser cache makes a page load faster?) but if the app is monitoring data or connecting to the net then they are using some cpu and need to be terminated or stopped from starting. It looks like the only way to do this is to root and then as said in your post ill beable to stop them starting up in the first place.
Thanks again for your time and info
Sent from my R800i using XDA App
b4d5h0t said:
Very interesting thank you for the detailed explanation and tips. Im gonna remove my task killer and try watchdog if i can, to keep an eye on my cpu. I am also going to look into rooting my phone, its just the constant android updates and horror storys of rooted phones with removed bloatware bricking after OTA thats putting me off.
I can understand how having an app in memory ready to go keeps your phone quick (in the same way a cookie in your browser cache makes a page load faster?) but if the app is monitoring data or connecting to the net then they are using some cpu and need to be terminated or stopped from starting. It looks like the only way to do this is to root and then as said in your post ill beable to stop them starting up in the first place.
Thanks again for your time and info
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Rooting is not going to do this for you. Rooting WILL allow you to remove apps that have no use to you whatsoever. But apps, even ones you aren't using are still going to behave like this. Not only that, but those actions are part of what keeps them snappy. And if you kill them, all you would be doing is making it harder and slower to run them when you need to as it will do all those things you wanted it to not do while it was in the background. That drains the battery more. The path you are following with this isn't gonna solve your problem. Android manages its memory on its own better than any of us can.
As I mentioned about coverage area, for example do you have poor service where you are? If you have WiFi keeping it on will prevent the phone from searching for data service which will help.
b4d5h0t said:
Very interesting thank you for the detailed explanation and tips. Im gonna remove my task killer and try watchdog if i can, to keep an eye on my cpu. I am also going to look into rooting my phone, its just the constant android updates and horror storys of rooted phones with removed bloatware bricking after OTA thats putting me off.
I can understand how having an app in memory ready to go keeps your phone quick (in the same way a cookie in your browser cache makes a page load faster?) but if the app is monitoring data or connecting to the net then they are using some cpu and need to be terminated or stopped from starting. It looks like the only way to do this is to root and then as said in your post ill beable to stop them starting up in the first place.
Thanks again for your time and info
Sent from my R800i using XDA App
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You may also want to try a minifree manager like autokiller in the market. Rather that acting like a task killer, it can edit androids built in process manager you can change how much ram is allocated to background and foregrounds apps and also how much memory android cache's, the cache is the minium amount of ram that android allows to be free, you could set it to 150mb if you wanted, then android will never let your free ram go lower than 150mb.
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Nice one ill look into it
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Just let Android manage itself, My Xperia play will last an entire day with a lot of use such as wifi, Bluetooth and other things.
I normally take things with a grain of salt that I read on the ol' interweb, however I came across this article on Android Authority (which site I consider somewhat reliable) and it got me to wondering if the information could be true and factual. The article I'm talking about is:
http://www.androidauthority.com/battery-myths-688089/
A couple of sections have me really re-thinking my battery saving tactics. Such as this excerpt:
Myth: Save battery power by killing apps or using an app killer
Aaaaagghh! Stop it! Stop doing it; stop spreading this lie. App killers and their proponents are the homeopathy and anti-vaxxers of the Android world: they don’t actually help and they can possibly make things worse.
There was a stretch of a few months back in, like, 2009 when app killers actually made Android run smoother. Then Android got a lot smarter about how it managed its resources, and all app killers do is suck up the resources they are claiming to protect. They became unnecessary before they even got popular.
Even if you’re just haphazardly murdering apps that seem to be running in the background by force stopping them or swiping them out of the Recent Apps menu, you’re often draining more battery than you’re saving. For one thing, a lot of apps spring right back to life after you kill them, meaning you just spent more resources than if you just left it alone. For another, the biggest battery sucker across the board is your display. If you’re spending screen time, not to mention seconds of your finite human life, needlessly assassinating apps, then you’re playing a game of whack-a-mole that is only wasting your time and your smartphone’s battery.
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Now if the above is true, then I'm wasting time and battery juice using Greenify. Anyone care to ring in on this one??
And then there is this section that has me wondering...
Myth: Disabling services like Bluetooth and Location Services drastically improves battery life
This is another one of those rumors that is still sticking around because it actually used to be good advice. Wi-fi and Bluetooth used to latch onto your smartphone’s battery life like a vampire bat, but today they’re nowhere near so bloodthirsty. And location services are even leaner.
It’s true that disabling all these or going into airplane mode will save some battery life. However, we’re talking a very tiny sliver – like half an hour over the span of an entire day, so the gains are arguably not worth the trouble. Leave the services that you use on the regular running all you want. Your device is designed to handle it.
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And so, I come to you members with more experience than I, and ask for your input. Not so much asking for your opinion, but rather for your experience in the references above.
1. I've never used greenify and my SOT ranges from 4-6 hours, depending on rom and usage. I don't kill my apps also. Most of them are running in the background.
2. WiFi location scanning is always on. Bluetooth scanning is off. When I tried switching off wifi scanning, my phone used more juice to locate it's position via GPS.
In the (small) amount of time I spent within the Android community, I gathered that it's just better as is, as Android advances . I just leave the system on stock settings and I don't use any third party App freezer/ optimizer/ hibernator/ killler.
Alright then... Thanks much for the input and for sharing your experiences.
I think I'll freeze Greenify for now, and see how it goes.
Once upon a time, apps such as Greenify were quite useful. Background services and apps would run rampant doing whatever they liked. It was more or less the wild west when it came to things like that.
But starting with Marshmallow, Android really started cracking down on this kind of behavior and began providing the OS and developers with APIs to better manage background activity. With the addition of Doze in Nougat, I would argue that apps such as Greenify are now more or less obsolete.
If anything, a wakelock blocker may still come in handy (especially when dealing with Google Play Services), but some (most?) custom ROMs have modded Doze to remove the built-in exception that it has for Play Services, so even a wakelock blocker is unnecessary.
Remove everything related to Google. Profit.
Fatsodonkey said:
Remove everything related to Google. Profit.
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So,you mean remove GMS? Ah,sorry,no.I'd rather use a magisk module to force doze gms if it's draining battery.
Mr.Ak said:
So,you mean remove GMS? Ah,sorry,no.I'd rather use a magisk module to force doze gms if it's draining battery.
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I prefer the "Destroy Google" way.
Fatsodonkey said:
I prefer the "Destroy Google" way.
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If you hate google so much(for whatever reason),why not stop using android then?
Mr.Ak said:
If you hate google so much(for whatever reason),why not stop using android then?
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I don't hate Google. I don't hate companies, but i believe that sometimes companies grow too big and have too much power.
I just hope that in the mobile space there will be a proper GNU/Linux phone.
With desktops things are quite nice nowadays.
Just watched the last 3 weeks of Click off the BBC. On one episode they were on about battery saving apps. Turns out the best one was the built in android battery saver. No app needed.