Database Info

Managing Memory

Hi all,
One habit I've developed with the Captivate is using Advanced Task Killer to kill apps that otherwise would just be hanging out in memory. I do this probably because I'm anal retentive like that, but also with the thought that it save me battery life if I do.
This has led to two questions of mine (excuse the noobiness to Android if these have been discussed):
1.) Why do so many applications start automatically when the phone boots up? (browser, gallery, etc etc). Is there a startup ini somewhere I can edit to prevent this or do all the apps just wake up? It's easy enough to kill, but I find some of the apps that start up very odd.
2.) Over the course of the day, even with Autokill on and security set to "Low", eventually my memory is consumed and it only gets back to its full state until the phone is rebooted. After all obvious apps have been killed the memory usage will will go from ~170mb (after a reboot) to as low as ~130mb (at the end of the day). Does anyone know why that happens and if there is a better way to manage memory/apps?
Thanks.

I used to use task killers, but I have uninstalled them and just let android do its thing. The only reason I'll end a program is if the program has an exit function or has froze, which is rare. With this method I don't have any slowdowns and great battery life. On the flipside I don't install poorly developed apps. Thats just me though.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App

[Q] Does Inactive Apps use battery in Android 2.1?

I got new Captivate two weeks ago and I didnt had any knowledge of Android before that. So as every noob does, I also got worried about my aweful battery and installed task killers. But I noticed that my phone started to lag. So after reading many articles and comments, I came to conclusion that I don't really need Task killer and Android is designed to stop all unwanted Apps itself (correct me if I am wrong here please)
So I thought to test something. I opened camera and then clicked back (not home key but back). The running apps in settings showed its not running, but in System Panel (as suggested by the author of one of the article) it shows Camera is still open but inactive.
So my question is, do these inactive but open apps consume bettery or affect performance?
My question may sound stupid, but I am really concerned about my battery not lasting more than 10 hrs.

If they use a lot of data and have constant updates then yes, they will consume a significant amount of battery. A moderatly simple app that is open but doesnt require data nor act frequently wont use a lot of battery at all. I still use a task killer, as android doesnt automatically "kill" on its own. You can avoid a lot of trouble by just turning off your mobile network when youre not using it; thats a great battery saver in general... good luck
Sent from my FroyoEris using XDA App

hilerc said:
You can avoid a lot of trouble by just turning off your mobile network when youre not using it; thats a great battery saver in general... good luck
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for replying...
I have tweek to trun off my 3g and its never on. But at work I use Wifi to listen to online radio on my phone. So do I have to kill apps like TweetDeck, Facebook and Gmail, with Task killer? Even though I have disabled auto sync for these accounts.

[Q] Q: Battry

pls I have purchased Desire S. in fact, i face a problem with battry life
could you advice me for any solution?

Settings>Sound>Pocket mode off (uncheck) that will help a bit.
Oh and don't try task killers they are useless.
And leave only syncing of essential programs on(like mail, weather, facebook/twitter..) and stop the stocks, news... useless stuff.

Thank you for your early reply

Also turn off auto brightness adjustment, set it to 30% (very good when inside) and add brightness widget to your home screen (to adjust when outside, bcs of sun)

are task killers really useless?> but how can I exit all of the apps that are running in the background? I think they drain a lot of battery juice on my desire S.

ghuk said:
are task killers really useless?> but how can I exit all of the apps that are running in the background? I think they drain a lot of battery juice on my desire S.
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Click to collapse
Thats what i tought at first...well is not how you think.
1. The memory uses same amount of battery even if used 99% or 5%.
2. When you "exit" one app, even if it doesn't close, it will use 0% cpu, and only stay in memory for quick start the next time you start it.
3. If you run out of memory, android will take care and close background apps to free up memory.
No need for task killers. Anyway, if you use task killers it will only use more battery because, some apps autorestart, using battery.

Background apps (not services, but apps you closed recently) run in background mode and only for some time, Android has it's own memory management.

ghuk said:
are task killers really useless?> but how can I exit all of the apps that are running in the background? I think they drain a lot of battery juice on my desire S.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's just how latest Android works thus making task killers useless.
If you're still paranoid, install System Panel app. With it, you can see a crapload of apps running in the background, but none is using the CPU which is what drains the battery. You can still end tasks with it, but you'll notice some of it will be back up instantly.
So if you're constantly auto killing those background apps which then instantly comes back up and then killed again and then up again and on and on, it will end up using more battery than leaving it in the background.
I even see some games in the background apps lol. But does it drain my battery? No.
Don't worry about the memory, it'll never run out.

There is a section regarding extending battery life within this extremely helpful guide
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1097538
Sent from my HTC Desire S using XDA App

Once I have the syncing under control, and resist the urge to spend hours playing games, I find the biggest drain is the screen.
I'm using Screen Filter to reduce the backlight level in situations where the automatic brightness is just too bright. This is especially useful in the evenings.
Only problem with Screen Filter is it sometimes interferes with the touch-screen in places, like when installing an .apk - the Install button doesn't respond until I switch Screen Filter off. Weird.

Rather than use an application or the Auto setting which I think aims far to high.
I just simply switch screen brightness down to about 25-30% and then turn it up when I'm outdoors in bright sun light if and when needed.

I recommend what friend above said. You can add widget to your desktop and switch brightness by one tap.
Sent from my HTC Desire S using Tapatalk

Guide to Maximizing Battery Life w/o Disabling Half Your Phones Features

*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 runs smoother, a big deal with sense 3.0.
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!
*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.
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

thanks for sharing the experience
i'm trying Automatic Task Killer

devine might said:
thanks for sharing the experience
i'm trying Automatic Task Killer
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no problem. let me kno how it goes for you

very good info! would also help if you specify which versions of android.....

Thanks for the info, hope it will increase my battery life to last a day

Airfaire said:
very good info! would also help if you specify which versions of android.....
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Click to collapse
im on my sensation so 2.3.3. Been getting a lot of hate on the sensation forums since task killers are officially deemed no longer needed, but this method really helps me with battery life hoping itd help some of u too

Watchdog> then any task killer
ADR6300

Hmm, ill try auto task killer as well, tried a few others.

I use JuiceDefender, I like it. It manages my connectivity pretty well and it does help.

This is excellent, many thanks. As a converted WM 6.5 user I have to say, I am enjoying android considerably more and I prefer it to the Metro interface of WP7. It's nice to know the little tricks to get the most out of it. Thanks again. ^_^

DarkSwanKnight said:
I use JuiceDefender, I like it. It manages my connectivity pretty well and it does help.
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Click to collapse
same here, JD works pretty good

TastyTorge said:
same here, JD works pretty good
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Click to collapse
Worth getting the full one or will the free version do?
Sent from my HTC HD2 running TyphooN CyanogenMod 7 via XDA Premium App

Thanks
Thanks for the info, and for sharing, i will try the different methods

i havent really bothered with task killers but ive found reducing the brightness and disabling data and sync makes my battery last alot longer. i just re enable when i need them.

also, i downloaded setcpu and added a profile for while the screen is off. that helps alot. the drain is about 5% with the screen off after every 3 or 4 hours.

Very good info thanks

You had me impressed until you mentioned task killers. Absolutely horrible...
Sent from my HTC Sensation 4G

Martin_Toy said:
Worth getting the full one or will the free version do?
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Click to collapse
Full version is much better.
It's killer app indeed. I think many of it's features should be natively included in android.
Options like "Turn off 3G/EDGE when connected to Wi-Fi", "Turn off all radios when screen is off", "Turn off Wi-Fi after x minutes if it doesn't connect to a network", "Set screen brightess to minimal when battery is low", etc....it wouldn't be that hard to implement and battery life, perhaps most criticized aspect of Android, would improve immensely.
fpu

floating_point_unit said:
Full version is much better.
It's killer app indeed. I think many of it's features should be natively included in android.
Options like "Turn off 3G/EDGE when connected to Wi-Fi", "Turn off all radios when screen is off", "Turn off Wi-Fi after x minutes if it doesn't connect to a network", "Set screen brightess to minimal when battery is low", etc....it wouldn't be that hard to implement and battery life, perhaps most criticized aspect of Android, would improve immensely.
fpu
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your mobile network DOES turn off when connected to wifi, and if all radios turned off when the screen went off, how would you ever get calls or emails with the phone in your pocket? The wifi after x minutes would be a nice feature, but I don't like things touching my screen brightness.

Thank you for your information.

problem masive battery drain

sou i bought my desire s for 6 months and i used it and daly use it vas ok calls messages games wi fi and when i go to sleep i put it on charger vith 15-20% of battery now for feiw days my battery drain is masive i just use it for feiw calls and messages i dont turn on wi fi or play games or something i set everithing on poversave but the problem is there and my phone is losing signal what sould i do???? im completly stock
sorry for my bad english

No no no. I already requested for your thread to be moved here. You should have just waited instead of opening up a new one again!
Sent from my Desire S using xda premium

Install better battery starts and check your wakelocks. Seeing is keeping your phone awake.
In the mean while post a screenshot of your battery usage
Sent from a Desire S waiting for Kernel 3 sources. WAKE UP HTC!!!!

if you're using 3g and your phone is losing signal then thats why. low signal strength will kill your battery as it constantly tries to find a new stronger cell and has to keep disconnecting switching to 2g then back to 3g etc. turn your wifi back on it uses less power than 3g

Try es task manager to stop stuff loading on boot as well. Used it on my ds and on the wife's sensation xe. Wife was getting big battery drain, would last a day after ics update, now it lasts 2
Sent from my HTC Desire S using XDA

Task Killer Misconceptions
So we’ve explained how android works, what it means by “running” apps, and how it automatically manages its own memory so you can stick to enjoying your phone, lets move onto dispelling some common misconceptions about android and the use of task killers:
“Task killers make my battery last longer” – FALSE!
Task killers actually do the opposite, they make your battery life shorter! Lets look at what exactly you are doing when you kill a task. You are completely removing it from memory. Ok, so compared to leaving it in memory you are expecting to save battery? No, whether or not that bit of memory is used by an app or is free, the same amount of battery is going to be used. You are actually reducing battery life because when you next go to use that app, you have to fully reopen it, this uses more memory than simply bringing it out of memory.
“Task killers make my phone run faster” – FALSE
Task killers cause your phone to become unstable and jerky. Killing processes is bad because a process may be shared between applications. When you kill it, you are causing disruption within the OS, forcing apps to reopen, to reopen a shared process.
“There is no exit button, thats why i use a task killer” – FALSE
There is no exit button because android was designed to never have the need for a user to close apps. If an app needs closing, android will do this itself.
or http://droid-den.com/android-guides/android-guide-should-i-use-a-task-killer/

@up you're right. But PCrepair was talking about a task manager to prevent some apps from starting at device boot. That's something different. Your really long quoted post was a little bit unnecessary..
Sent by my fingers to your head.

I don't agree with you. I am a fan of ES apps but Es Task Manager mainly purpouse is to kill tasks.
I don't know what's causing the OP's problem but i am 99% sure that a task manager/killer is not the solution.
And please try not to comment my posts context/quallity i don't want to start a flame but i am sure you are not proude of more than 30% of your posts.
Sent from my HTC Desire S

@uq the reason for the es app is to stop none essential apps starting on boot. I agree that task killers will drain battery quicker.
Sent from my HTC Desire S using XDA