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Apps running in background

K... I'm new to android (from iPhone) and I just bought the mt4g... I downloaded the advanced task killer, but every time I "kill" the apps, there are 10 more running less than 5 seconds later... I've set my autokill to crazy, have an ignore list, etc... any thing else I can do to limit what crap runs without me opening the app myself?
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

kevo817 said:
K... I'm new to android (from iPhone) and I just bought the mt4g... I downloaded the advanced task killer, but every time I "kill" the apps, there are 10 more running less than 5 seconds later... I've set my autokill to crazy, have an ignore list, etc... any thing else I can do to limit what crap runs without me opening the app myself?
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App
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I believe you are not supposed to use task killers on Android because the system manages apps and when you stop them it messes up something. Here is a link: http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/

Correct. There is no need for task killers with these phones.

Glad I asked... uninstalled it, guess I'll see how it goes
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Yes sir! Plus thats why we have such big ram size
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Wow I didn't know this, I just uninstalled my task manager.
myTouch4G (Glacier)

It can also hurt battery life as well. If you constantly force close applications the phone will boot them back up which puts strain on the processor and uses more battery life.
Sent from my HTC Glacier using XDA App

Speaking from personal experience: once there's enough RAM in the phone, there's no need for external task killer or manager. Yes, it was necessary on the phones like G1 or original MyTouch with less then 1 year old OS. At this point, Android matured enough to handle everything on its own and it does beatiful job at it. I am almost at the point of getting MT4G, using wife's old Cliq at the moment. I can't believe how much difference extra RAM does, it never slows down for me on 2.1 de-blurred. Be extra careful downloading multiple apps though because if one misbehaves it will be hard to know which one.
Remember, free RAM is wasted ram, especially true with FroYo

You should still use a task killer, just don't use an autokiller. Let's say you use play a game, open browser, open music, open 3+ other cpu intensive apps..They will not close on there own, till the ram is "extremely low". Apps still use cpu when in b/g, like syncing apps like fb and twitter.

Task Killers
I don't see any reason not to have a task killer...without it, how would you know if there is a rogue app on your system? With a task killer installed, I was able to see what apps were loading at startup and then if I rarely use it, I blocked it with Startups. This has had a huge impact (for the better) on my battery life as well.
I agree not to setup the task killer to aggressively kill tasks, but if you use it to see what is happening on your phone, I don't see the harm in them at all.

don't you think a task killer would be built into android if Google intended us to manually kill tasks?

I have actually been going into the packages and disabling them via a terminal emulator. It was really easy and it seems to have prevented them from launching again.

First Android Phon App Killer question

Picked up the G2x the first day it came out. Definitely love it over my old Nokia N97. Being this is my first Android device I followed the advice of some friends and got the Android Task Killer (ATK) to help save battery life.
I know the battery life is having issues in general, but I'd like to do what I can.
When I open ATK and kill the running apps I notice that if I open it again a few minutes later all the apps are back running again, like FaceBook, AppPace, CarHome... and most of the bloatware T-Mo preinstalled on the phone.
Wasn't sure if it is normal for these tasks to keep running even after I kill them once or if I have something messed up.

The older versions of android benefitted from a task killer.
Newer versions do not need one and using one can actually hinder performance.
Sent from my LG-P999

Some tasks stay running for notifications and stuff. Download OS Monitor and you'll see some of those apps don't consume any CPU.
Be sure to configure notifications and sync properly for some apps... like Facebook. I think the default is every hour which can be murder on a battery.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App

DeezNotes said:
Some tasks stay running for notifications and stuff. Download OS Monitor and you'll see some of those apps don't consume any CPU.
Be sure to configure notifications and sync properly for some apps... like Facebook. I think the default is every hour which can be murder on a battery.
Sent from my LG-P999 using XDA App
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Task killers are really not useful with Android and hasn't been for a long while. Just because a task is "running" doesn't mean it's consuming any resources: battery, RAM, CPU. Android will properly manage these background tasks and task killers can end up using more battery than any tasks to do their thing. Especially with a high end phone like the G2x that has plenty of CPU and RAM, no need to bother with one, it will likely just make it worse.

KnitGnosis said:
Picked up the G2x the first day it came out. Definitely love it over my old Nokia N97. Being this is my first Android device I followed the advice of some friends and got the Android Task Killer (ATK) to help save battery life.
I know the battery life is having issues in general, but I'd like to do what I can.
When I open ATK and kill the running apps I notice that if I open it again a few minutes later all the apps are back running again, like FaceBook, AppPace, CarHome... and most of the bloatware T-Mo preinstalled on the phone.
Wasn't sure if it is normal for these tasks to keep running even after I kill them once or if I have something messed up.
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wow, in the exact same situation here! love my old n85, but its time had come. the multitasking implementation on symbian was amazing, but i guess android takes care of it for you I don't use a task killer, and i've rooted my phone and deleted all T-Mobile bloatware, so I'm not having any problems with random apps starting up for no reason.

There is a app called "Fast Reboot". It is a lot more beneficial than any task killer. It basically does what it says. It will reboot your device without your phone turning off.

Cool thanks for the information guys.

High memory being used.

Hey what's up everyone. Anyone know why there is so much RAM being used on the phone? As soon as I bought the phone without installing any apps, I'll open the task manger and see over 430mb's of memory being used, giving me a little over 100mb's left. I'll run 3 apps, bring it into the 80-90mb's left and the phone gets laggy.
Anyone know why the phone is using so much memory with nothing running In the Task manager? I never see it under 400mb's of use.
Thanks
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App

Is it the same after a reboot?
For my Sensation, I've noticed that after a few times using it and playing with it, the avaliable RAM decreases even if I have no more than 5 apps running
Rebooting the Sensation gives me fresh RAM.
Also you may use a taskiller or task manager, that will show you much more running tasks than what is displayed by the stock HTC task manager

HTC's task manager is not even showing the right amount of ram. Go into menu->settings->applications->running and look at your ram there.

I just pulled the battery out and turned the phone back on. Says 468mb's are being used. Have around 110 availible.
Borodin, thanks. I'll try that. But I've noticed after 5 apps running. The phone will get real laggy. I came from an HTC HD7 and I loved how smooth it was. Not seeing that in this phone much...but still like it.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App

I'm not saying that it's not ridiculous that Sense 3.0 is using that much RAM, I'm just saying that may be we have more mem available then we think.
In my phone right now:
HTC's readings are 438 used/120 free
Android's readings are 253 used/263 free.
Phone definitely needs a make over as Sense is just bogging it down.

Supposedly has something to do with the 2.3 Android system
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA Premium App

Yes I don't know why the two are reporting different amounts. But I have a feeling that the one in the running services is showing the correct value.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA Premium App

I installed ADW ex & checked a few times to see how much ram I had and it shows a little over 200mb free(in tsk mngr). Not to mention this thing is now snappy as hell.
Sent from my HTC Feeling.

Strange, I can reach a max of 338Mb free (according to a task killer and an external task manager from the market) after a reboot and after having killed all unecessary tasks. I use settings=>apps=>running apps to kill some tasks, and taskiller to kill some other, because both of them don't display all of the running tasks and display some that the other doesn't display.
After two days of (eavy?) use, doing the same trick to kill al unwantesd tasks, I can't go over 200 or sometimes 150MB so I reboot.

Just like most modern os you don't have to worry about memory. Android will take care of it. Also remember, if you're not using the memory its useless. It's better to have 10mb of memory free always as long as you don't notice issues. Apart from apps there are cached apps, buffers and other things loaded to keep the phone speedy. Just don't look or think about it and definitely don't use a task killer.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App

.....or at least, use a task killer very carefuly if you use one, set it to ignore all the system tasks, and also all tasks the OS will always keep on puting ON again indefinitly if they are killed, your wallpaper, any media related app, etc
(after each reboot, I have Gmail, the reader, news, weather, facebook, messaging, etc opened in the background for nothing, I definitly prefer killing it as they will start again normaly if I need them)
But right, except for N64oid and Fpse, I have never been bothered by too low RAM on the Sensation. And when that happened on these 2 emulators, it was after 2 days of heavy use without any reboot, so....^^

mobilehavoc said:
Just like most modern os you don't have to worry about memory. Android will take care of it. Also remember, if you're not using the memory its useless. It's better to have 10mb of memory free always as long as you don't notice issues. Apart from apps there are cached apps, buffers and other things loaded to keep the phone speedy. Just don't look or think about it and definitely don't use a task killer.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App
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I agree with you 100%, and again with your comment about the task killer. Don't install a task killer, and don't obsess about killing about with the built in task killer. Since 2.2 android has done an amazing job at managing and using available resources. It's pre-loading services and apps into memory to have things launch sooner, etc. When the system runs out of available memory it will kill whatever apps it feels it needs to kill in order to give the smoothest experience possible.

Paging Dr B said:
I agree with you 100%, and again with your comment about the task killer. Don't install a task killer, and don't obsess about killing about with the built in task killer.
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The only reason I have a task killer now is if anything is loading for no reason. With that I found that VTOK & Movies by Flixster were always running & causing the phone to never sleep & draining my battery. They were always listed as in the foreground (along with Tmobile's Wifi Calling & MyAccount apps).

Bloatware!! The sooner it can be removed, the better.
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using Tapatalk

I've noticed that rosie uses alot of ram on every sense build. But 3.0 is a little over the top. It gets killed quite easily as well after using the xda app, browser, and download manager for example. And then sense has to completely reload... Htc obviously noticed it a little late in the game and was quick to make miniscule changes in a desperate attempt to conserve ram usage. No scrolling wallpaper? On a dualcore 1.2ghz processor? Really? Lockscreen lag? Lag at all? Can't wait fire a cooked sense 3.0 rom. The difference will be tremendous!
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G using XDA App

Android is at its most efficient when the memory is being fully utilised. Don't think of memory usage in Windows terms.

crx4xharder said:
No scrolling wallpaper? On a dualcore 1.2ghz processor? Really?
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Ask and you shall recieve, and that's what HTC just did. The no-scrolling wallpaper is considered a UI feature just as it is on the Galaxy S 2. It's also standard on ADW-EX and Launcher pro. I personally dig the stationary wallpaper.

what have you got so bad against task killers??
You just say "don't use it", without any explanation....
I use one, like I do on my 2 other Android devices, my Sensation is extremely stable, and I don't want to lose fps when I use Fpse or N64oid, sorry to tell you you're wrong: having less than 150MB ram, because many apps are running in the background, when starting one of these 2 emus, makes fps drop, or frameskip less efficient.
Try it yourself if you don't believe me.

i900frenchaddict said:
what have you got so bad against task killers??
You just say "don't use it", without any explanation....
I use one, like I do on my 2 other Android devices, my Sensation is extremely stable, and I don't want to lose fps when I use Fpse or N64oid, sorry to tell you you're wrong: having less than 150MB ram, because many apps are running in the background, when starting one of these 2 emus, makes fps drop, or frameskip less efficient.
Try it yourself if you don't believe me.
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Sorry, I don't use emulators. I also don't have a sensation, so I can't comment on gaming on one. I have however played just about every game imaginable on my SGS1 and have never had to worry about closing an app to play any game. The main reason why I tell people like the OP to not use task killers is because they tend to begin automatically killing tasks(the people using them, not the app on it's own), and since the newer versions of android behave they do, those tasks just end up starting again which then leads to an endless loop of task killing, and battery drains for no reason. I also make it a habit of restarting my phones once a day or two, so I never really give the devices to get bogged down with extra crap running. I'm just saying that's my experience. If you like it, then so be it. Kill away.
Another thing you may want to try is, backing out of all of your running apps instead of being addicted to the home button. Home leaves the apps running and using resources; Backing out closes them and keeps the universe in a zen like state. I love the home button, when I know i'm going back to use a certain app immediately. If not then I back out.

allright, I agree with what you say.
Luckilly, I've set my Taskiller not to endlessly kill tasks that always start again (and actually, Taskiller doesn't display them, or don't kill them automatically or in one click on the widget, only if you go to the app itself and select force kill, what I never do knowing they will start again asap).
I mainly use it, from its widget, to kill everything related to messaging, gmail, facebook, reader, tutorial, etc, that tend to start automatically and never stop when I connect datas or reboot the Sensation.
I also most of the time try to back out instead of home button, but for a few apps, it may be loooonng because it will display a lot of pages back before killing the app.
As for newer versions of RAM management, it also depends on the ROM I suppose.
With my stock SFR/Vodafone french ROM, after, let's say, 2 days of use, the RAM goes under 170Mb, even if I close all tasks, I don't know where RAM is drained, I'm pretty sure my stock ROM is responsible for it, so I reboot every day or every 2 days too.

Task killers Vs manual force close?

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
Sent from my R800i using XDA App
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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.
Sent from my R800i using Tapatalk

Nice one ill look into it
Sent from my R800i using XDA App

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.

Task killer vs no task killer?

I use a task killer so im curious why some people say not to use them. What are your opinions?
Sent from my Inspire 4G using xda premium

I personally use them and havent come across suggestions not to, as long as u know what you are "killing" and its not a system process , it should be ok and yes it does free up RAM

I dont use any task killer and Im happy

I personaly would have a task killer one that kills all when idle. and frees up ram due to the fact i like to do cpu hungry tasks often

Ystrem said:
I dont use any task killer and Im happy
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Same here, kill the task, and then feed the task killer the battery power saved.
I have tried them and found most of them didn't help much.

cnavi said:
Same here, kill the task, and then feed the task killer the battery power saved.
I have tried them and found most of them didn't help much.
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Same here.
I don't use any of them.I used before but i don't saw too much help.Just task killer use cpu more and load ram.I use now just a shortcut of standard runing services default from android.

Don't use task Killers. Android has its own built in task manager Which works far better than 3rd party task killers. All you doing is making android reload everything again. Then you wonder why this app doesn't update in the background or work properly it is your fault. Your killing off the processes. Ram is essentially useless in android if it's not being used.
If you have lets say most phones have 512-1gig of ram. Your phone will never say you have 512 ram full please free up ram. It gets to a certain memory limit like depending on what it was set to and then end the processes automatically by itself. If there are many processes running android will start swapping out processes to replace for the new one. When your playing a game and say oh i want to browse the web to check on some game codes or whatever you can go right back to the game.
What if you want to listen to your own music as well. You can then go right back to the game in the exact spot left off. But if you go I'm kill the game process off you won't be able to do that. Don't press that Clear ram in that task manager you have either. All process will be killed including google services. Which will be reloaded again as well as system processes. Everytime android needs to reload its using more power meaning worst battery life.
The only time you should use a task manager is when there is a rogue application or a memory leak.

Watchdog
I don't use a Task Killer, but I do like Watchdog. It's more of a system monitor and lets me know if any background apps jump over a particular CPU usage threshold.
---------- Post added at 02:02 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:55 PM ----------
There is a free, Lite version if you want to give it a try. Amazon had the pay version as their free app o' the day a while back, and I jumped on it.
market.android.com/details?id=com.zomut.watchdoglite&hl=en

I use to use taskkiller but my phone seems to run the same with or without, so I got rid of it.

exileinoblivion7 said:
I use a task killer so im curious why some people say not to use them. What are your opinions?
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i dont like task killers, if your really desperate for ram and use android, i recommend using the v6 supercharger script made by zeppelinrox. ofcourse the thread can be found here in xda. Iwouldnt recommend task killers for several reasons:
1 they take some ram space themselves
2 they use some cpu thus making ur phone slower
3 they use some cpu thus draining your battery faster
4 they make your boot time on your phone longer because they are being loaded whereas scripts dont have that issue
5 i havent actually seen any propper task manager that has like autokill option and woks properly so you constantly have to press the end tasks button (like on system panel for example) and thats quite boring if your doing it all the time... scripts dont have that issue

Killbynature said:
Don't use task Killers. Android has its own built in task manager Which works far better than 3rd party task killers. All you doing is making android reload everything again. Then you wonder why this app doesn't update in the background or work properly it is your fault. Your killing off the processes. Ram is essentially useless in android if it's not being used.
If you have lets say most phones have 512-1gig of ram. Your phone will never say you have 512 ram full please free up ram. It gets to a certain memory limit like depending on what it was set to and then end the processes automatically by itself. If there are many processes running android will start swapping out processes to replace for the new one. When your playing a game and say oh i want to browse the web to check on some game codes or whatever you can go right back to the game.
The only time you should use a task manager is when there is a rogue application or a memory leak.
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Great job explaining this man, I've been aware that killing apps just makes them restart. I really only kill apps if they are acting a fool.
And to clear things up I don't have a task killer installed, however I do use the one built into the go launcher app drawer to kill apps that go nuts.
I have used the v6 script before, however I recently downloaded Rom toolbox and it let's you adjust minfrees from there. You guys should check it out
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I don't use a task killer. My phone burns less than 1% of battery per hour when idle.
Nexus One on Cyanogenmod 7.1

exileinoblivion7 said:
I have used the v6 script before, however I recently downloaded Rom toolbox and it let's you adjust minfrees from there. You guys should check it out
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i have a low end phone, as i ran out of cash after buying myself headphones and an itouch, so i couldnt get the phone of my dreams and had to settle for a really cheap samsung galaxy 3 so i dont have a very wide choice of minfrees i can choose from... i got like 256 ram or something, and i dont use swap because i hate partitioning my sdcard...
im so definitly changing my phone in 2012, im either waiting for the nozumi to come out (huge sony ericsson fan ^_^) or im settling for the HTC gigabeats

Task killers are good when you see a rogue app that is draining a ton of your battery life but aren't good when you use the "Kill All" button. As long as their are poorly developed applications, there will be a use for task killers.

some people will tell you not to use task killers because it inhbits Android's normal functioning by interfering with RAm use, causes things to go wrong, running apps don't use battery, blah blah blah. but there are a few problems with these claims.
First, Android's RAM management is not flawless. no Operating system is. fanboys keep claiming it is yet offer no support for whether a 3rd party task killer is better or worse. in fact, they were all claiming this when Froyo was the latest. but then when Gingerbread came out, one of its new features was better RAM management, which fanboys around the internet praised it for, which means there had, in fact, been room for improvement, which they had been denying for quite some time.
second. there are around 500,000 apps on the market. some are flawed, causing RAM leaks and various other malfunctions that ANdroid can't always handle. a task killer is your best, and sometimes only option in this situation, as you might not reasonably have the option of deleting the app permanently.
third, battery life. it may be true that apps simply being running in the background alone doesn't use battery; I'm not sure. yet what fanboys routinely ignore is, many of these apps don't just sit there waiting to be turned on again. some of them turn on so as to collect user data about all sorts of things, then broadcast it to the developer for various uses. this broadcasting uses your phone's radio even when in the background, and that DOES use electricity - from your battery, not to mention data if you have a limited plan. a very large amount of apps do this, which is one major reason why ICS now includes a data management menu that monitors all apps' data usage, as well as a built in app freezer that stops apps from running until you allow them to again.

I use the one that comes stock, and alathough it frees up ram I dont notice any difference in battery drain (1% per hour) or any difference in performance

Falkner09 said:
some people will tell you not to use task killers because it inhbits Android's normal functioning by interfering with RAm use, causes things to go wrong, running apps don't use battery, blah blah blah. but there are a few problems with these claims.
First, Android's RAM management is not flawless. no Operating system is. fanboys keep claiming it is yet offer no support for whether a 3rd party task killer is better or worse. in fact, they were all claiming this when Froyo was the latest. but then when Gingerbread came out, one of its new features was better RAM management, which fanboys around the internet praised it for, which means there had, in fact, been room for improvement, which they had been denying for quite some time.
second. there are around 500,000 apps on the market. some are flawed, causing RAM leaks and various other malfunctions that ANdroid can't always handle. a task killer is your best, and sometimes only option in this situation, as you might not reasonably have the option of deleting the app permanently.
third, battery life. it may be true that apps simply being running in the background alone doesn't use battery; I'm not sure. yet what fanboys routinely ignore is, many of these apps don't just sit there waiting to be turned on again. some of them turn on so as to collect user data about all sorts of things, then broadcast it to the developer for various uses. this broadcasting uses your phone's radio even when in the background, and that DOES use electricity - from your battery, not to mention data if you have a limited plan. a very large amount of apps do this, which is one major reason why ICS now includes a data management menu that monitors all apps' data usage, as well as a built in app freezer that stops apps from running until you allow them to again.
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Could you please explain what third party task killers do that the Android system manager doesnt do natively?

johnston9234 said:
Could you please explain what third party task killers do that the Android system manager doesnt do natively?
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From my personal experience it doesn't kill some rogue apps that drain my phone's battery life. Occasionally I use the app "GPS Status" to help find my location faster and if I don't immediately kill the app after my location is locked, the app shoots up to 30-40% on Battery Status.

johnston9234 said:
Could you please explain what third party task killers do that the Android system manager doesnt do natively?
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work responsively, to start with. every time i've tried to open the application manager on android, I first have to go through all the sub menus to get to it, then sit and wait for it to slooooooooooowly load up the list on installed apps, then running apps, then click on the app, then wait for it to load that particular app's info, THEN I can force close it.
two, they often catch apps running that the default manager doesn't notice, I presume because their developers code them to be hidden somehow.
so yeah, they're occasionally a valid option to use.

I'm happy with or without task killer )
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