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.
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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
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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
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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.
so i installed advanced task manager and for example i have google maps opend and i select it and kill it via advanced task manager BUT if i go in settings>aplications>running services google maps is still there whit 1 runing process......
is there any program that wil clouse for good every process a program has?
also sometimes if i check battery use, google maps is top of the list but if i check it in running proceses or whit advanced task manager google maps aint running
whit normal use my battery barely lasts me tru the day i had it 100% at 8 am now its 3 pm and i have 62% left with 15 mins of navigation use....thats all noting else
How long have you had the device? Mine lasts a day so far and I bought my NS on the 27th. I might have to calibrate the battery. You do not need the task killer. Nexus S has the manage data where you can force stop running services you don't need. Also Android does garbage collection which will manage your memory.
GB is supposed to improve battery life and given time you find your battery will improve.
Search on the threads for battery Calibration or goto
http://hemorrdroids.net/how-to-make-your-battery-last/
look at point 9.
Hope this helps
Tom
You need to get out of the iPhone Jailbreak poor memory management frame of mind where more free memory is a good thing.
Android (2.1 and higher) is very efficient at handling memory; it will do much better than you with a task manager will.
It's pointless to kill apps with a manual task manager, except in the very rare case that the app has run amok and is actually using up juice/cpu, because Android will just re-open those apps. You're actually hurting battery life (some will argue) by killing an app that you didn't need to because Android will just re-open it.
The mantra in Android is "free memory is wasted memory." In theory the apps are just sort of pre-loaded to have them ready and waiting to use in the background when you want them. They'll load faster that way. In the meantime, they're just sitting there not using any juice.
On your laptop/desktop you generally don't go into the task manager and kill everything off, there's no need to, and on the Androids it's the same thing. Leave it alone unless there's a really good reason to muck around with it.
That said, your battery life doesn't sound like most reports in the Nexus S community. My Nexus S, and the reports of others, is getting TERRIFIC battery life. This is by far the best battery life on any Android phone I've owned, and it's on a par with my iPhone 4 and 3GS devices.
Are you using Google Latitude? That seems to be a battery killer via Maps for some. Go into Maps settings and make sure it is off.
I use my phone a lot, it's on for hours each day with me reading twitter, text messages, looking up things on the web, dictating myself notes, etc, and I've only once even gotten the phone down to the 15% battery warning in 18 hour days.
funstuffalex said:
so i installed advanced task manager and for example i have google maps opend and i select it and kill it via advanced task manager BUT if i go in settings>aplications>running services google maps is still there whit 1 runing process......
is there any program that wil clouse for good every process a program has?
also sometimes if i check battery use, google maps is top of the list but if i check it in running proceses or whit advanced task manager google maps aint running
whit normal use my battery barely lasts me tru the day i had it 100% at 8 am now its 3 pm and i have 62% left with 15 mins of navigation use....thats all noting else
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P.S. you mentioned NAVIGATION; you're aware that Navigation runs in the background if you haven't reached your destination yet, right? Even if you go to the home screen or put the phone to sleep, Navigation is still running. You have to reach your destination, or manually exit Navigation from one of the menu key options while it's in the foreground. Could that be your problem?
Also, you can grab an app from the Market called AutoStarts, and it will let you mark any app as not being allowed to start automatically after certain events, such as booting up, but once you manually start an app, it's back in the queue for Android's memory management.
If you really feel the need to have something doing more than Android's default memory management settings, on some phones and ROMs I've had good results with the app called Autokiller; this isn't a task killer, and it's poorly named for what it does, which is tweak the system defaults for free memory. Try it on strict or aggressive if you really feel the need. I haven't installed it on my Nexus S, no need to in my opinion.
i have the phone for 4 days now yea the first 2 days i used it alot and charged it like 3 times in 2 days(let it drop to 5% then charged it to 100%)
i am not using latitude, i know that part about navigation and i always check to make sure its cloused after im done whit it and my screen brigthneess is set to lowest
il give autostart a go it sounds good if it really dose wat it seaz it dose
it may also help to not have GPS enabled when not actually using an application that requires GPS
Folks, a little Public Service Announcement:
As soon as I got my Infuse, I put Advanced Task Manager on it. The Best Buy Mobile guy told me you need such an app on Android phones, and I fell for it.
I put Advanced Task Manager on the phone and set it to kill apps every 5 minutes, excluding the ones I know are needed. I also put Juice Defender on the phone and set it to the least aggressive setting. I thought I was keeping my phone running fast and saving battery.
(I can't say that Juice Defender isn't doing its job. I still have it running today. I'm not blaming it for the problems I was having, but I still wonder...)
What I discovered was that my phone would lock up sometimes. It would hiccup constantly when playing music through bluetooth. It would take a second or two to change screens. I'd check Task Manager and see just about every app on the phone running and I'd kill them, only to see them all running again a minute later. I'd have to remove the battery and reboot to get Wi-Fi or bluetooth to connect properly.
Then I started googling and discovered this: You don't need a task manager. Android runs background apps - even ones you didn't start - in order to keep them handy, or to refresh data, or just to keep them updated, and THIS IS NORMAL behavior, and it doesn't burn up your battery. If you screw with this, you will prevent your phone from functioning in an orderly manner. Killing tasks in the background will just queue them up to launch in the background later and usually results in more of them being launched at the same time.
So I took Advanced Task Manager off the phone. And everything got better.
You got it correct. No task manager is needed
The Best Buy Mobile guy is an IDIOT. I bet he pushes iPhones like crazy cause "you don't need a task killer" too, right? Imagine what the world would be like if competent and knowledgeable people were hired for better than decent salaries....
do not use a task killer
Infuse has its own task viewer/killer. HOLD the home key and it pops up...
Some Best Buy employees are clueless about these things! I went in there asking for a Asus Transformer in the computer section and the employee had no clue what that was, he even told me himself that he didn't know....:/
*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
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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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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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same here, JD works pretty good
TastyTorge said:
same here, JD works pretty good
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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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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
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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.