Related
Hello I am a grad student looking for bugs, apps, system configurations, or anything else that drains the battery of android devices unnaturally fast (especially Motorola's DroidX, but really any Android phone). I've been reading the forums a lot already and have a good understanding of all the basic issues that will drain the battery expectedly (GPS, wifi/radio, CPU, over clocking, frequent app syncing, etc).
I am NOT looking for an app to extend battery my life or trying to keep my phone running longer. I'm looking for repeatable software/configurations/bugs (especially version numbers) of things that kill battery performance.
I'm hoping to compile these into a characteristic study that helps me and my fellow students create system tools that will help everyone automatically find and fix battery issues.
Thanks for your help.
--NCM
basically just having a lot of widgets on your screens or even having tasks running will drain battery. I've noticed htc phones have the worst problem with battery cause they run off of sense UI and that takes more battery then lets say the droid x running off of the moto UI
There are alot of things that can and will drain your battery. Your screen brightness to high, especially since these newer phones have fancier screens that look great but kill the battery, as well as lighter, white wallpaper will also kill your battery.
Apps that will kill a battery fast
-Google Maps
-ESPN Sports center
-All kinds of games
-You Tube
-your browser
-Certain Livewallpapers
I guess this is my honeycomb ignorance (still getting used to the features) but when pulling up recent apps with the softkey I really only want apps that are currently running.
Are some of these apps are already "closed" and by choosing a thumbnail from the list I'm re-opening these?
Is there a setting anywhere to "limit" the history I see? Like <5 apps or something?
I have Task Killer pro intalled now to manage the real running apps but the Softkey is handier, if I can just be sure of what its supposed to indicate.
Thanks
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
I was wondering this as well. I haven't found any way to do it yet.
I don't know of any way except to manage apps in the settings and then kill "running" apps....but remember; these are apps "in memory" like you'd think in Windows.....they are not sucking resources...
I think that there is an article here somewhere about this list and why you shouldn't use an app killer in Honeycomb....
I'm more interested in changing it to a grid layout, like a speed dial.
yeah I know theyre not in memory but they are wasting screen space. I finished playing chess yesterday, I dont think the game should stay in the recent apps list. Froyo & Gingerbread are much better at managing this.
moo99 said:
yeah I know theyre not in memory but they are wasting screen space. I finished playing chess yesterday, I dont think the game should stay in the recent apps list. Froyo & Gingerbread are much better at managing this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree. I just want a cleaner recent apps list. Sometimes it's hard to find what you're looking for.
I guess a workaround would be to longpress the home screen, put a widget there that is linked directly to "manage applications" and then it would only be one press and then zap the offending apps.
You do realize the Recent Apps button on the homescreen is just that, a Recent Apps button. It's not exactly a "running in the background" button.
"I finished playing chess yesterday, I dont think the game should stay in the recent apps list."
Why not? It is a recently played app isn't it? LOL.
And yeah, agree with the other reply, if you want a list of running apps.... don't touch the Recent Apps list button lol.
Stop worrying about what's running in the background. Just enjoy the damn Android.
Im not near my TF now but I use Multitasking Pro on my Galaxy S for that. you can choose to open it by double clicking the home button and see only running apps or recent apps - its configurable in the application settings. i does cost about 2$ i think but it was the best 2$ I've spent
this is called a 'Recent apps' list for a reason...it's 'Recent'..not current running...
Well you could always downgrade to 3.0 if it really bothers you. That only showed 5 apps!
LOL. Its a nuisance, not so much a grievance; but I'm glad I'm not the only one annoyed, perhaps this will get looked at ;-)
Possibly once Honeycomb is more prevalent there will come market apps or enough reportage to have an updte with a setting for it, or a utility that tweaks it. Regardless, I appreciate the feedback. At least now I know its sort of "normal".
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
My number one wish is for Google to improve multitasking (and give back control to the user as to which programs are running).
As is, the implementation just isn't very usable if you consider it to be a multitasking device -- it's really closer to single-tasking with a memory of what it did recently and the ability to reopen with a similar state to what it last had.
For example, I use my tab during F1 races for timing and scoring. I have F1.com's timing and scoring app, and I have access to a (non-public) website which provides further real-time info through Adobe Flash in a web browser.
If I switch from the web browser to F1.com's timing and scoring app for more than say 10-15 seconds, then back again, the flash app has to reconnect to the server because the web browser ceased running, even though the browser and the F1.com app were the only programs running and had ample memory / CPU power / a mains power supply connected, ie. no reason to halt the browser.
This isn't the only time I hit this issue, it's just one easy-to-explain example.
I'd much rather I had the ability to exit programs / apps myself when I'm done with them, and to keep programs / apps running in the background when I want them to. It'd make the whole experience much more coherent and logical.
The Flash plugin was designed to suspend when you switched apps. It's not an android issue.
Adding "close programs" to the current implementation would not make it more logical, it would make it more convoluted. It doesn't need it.
knoxploration said:
.I'd much rather I had the ability to exit programs / apps myself when I'm done with them, and to keep programs / apps running in the background when I want them to. It'd make the whole experience much more coherent and logical.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The problem is that the vast majority of users won't want to handle this themselves, and would expect the OS to do if for them.
Personally, I'm in favour of having some sort of mechanism whereby you can tell the OS not to kill specific tasks if you so choose, but otherwise task management performs as is.
With specific regard to your example, I think that the OS believes it is always OK to kill the browser, which is why it can be killed so quickly after switching away. For other apps, this doesn't seem to happen - for example, yesterday I was connected to a remote server using Wyse PocketCloud, and I frequently switched away to do something else for 30-60 minutes at a time, yet my remote desktop connection was never dropped or killed.
Regards,
Dave
Me personally don't need and don't like this "recent" app button. Or I need it to have an option either to clear it or not. You know we sometimes need privacy over such things
JCopernicus said:
The Flash plugin was designed to suspend when you switched apps. It's not an android issue.
Adding "close programs" to the current implementation would not make it more logical, it would make it more convoluted. It doesn't need it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed, if flash is left to run in the background it will drain the battery like hell..and other system resources as well.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
...and it should be *my* choice whether that happens. That is where this argument totaly falls on its face. *I* know whether it is vital to me that an app remain open, or can safely be closed. The tablet doesn't.
As long as it remains in the tablet's hands, it will continue to annoy me by leving open apps that I no longer need running, while closing apps that I strongly do need running.
magicpork said:
Agreed, if flash is left to run in the background it will drain the battery like hell..and other system resources as well.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using XDA Premium App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's just it....it doesn't.
Revisiting Android Task Killers and Why You Still Don’t Need One
from another forum.
We almost hate to approach the topic of Task Killers on Android after all this time, but with so many new faces here at Droid Life and in Android in general, it’s something that needs to be done. In fact, after seeing the Amazon app of the day and reading through the Twitter conversations we just had with many of you, this thing needs to be posted immediately.
Let’s see if we can’t get you all some better battery life!
First off, please ignore the image up at the top of the post. If this was 2009 and we were all running something less than Android 2.2, that statement plastered on that red banner might be somewhat correct. But since it is 2011 and the majority of people on the planet are running Android 2.2, we need to get you away from the mindset that killing off tasks on your phone is a good thing.
So rather than me blabbering about the inner-workings of Android and how it manages RAM for the 10,000th time, I’m going to just pull from some posts that friends of ours have done that explain this in the plainest of ways.
First up is our boy @cvpcs who you may know from CM and his Sapphire ROM days. He knows Android inside-and-out, so when he goes into memory management which is done by the OS itself, you should listen up:
…What people don’t seem to realize is that android is designed to have a large number of tasks stored in memory at all times. Why? Well basically we are talking about a mobile device. On a mobile device things tend to be slower. The hardware isn’t as robust as say a desktop or a laptop, so in order to get that same “snappy” feeling, there have to be workarounds.
One of these is how android deals with memory. Android will load up your apps and then keep them running until they absolutely HAVE to kill them. This is because that way, if you want to re-open an app, the system already has it loaded and can then just resume it instead of reloading it. This provides a significant performance increase.
What a lot of people don’t realize as well is that android kernels have their own task manager. This means that:
it will be more efficient than any app-based task manager as it is run at the kernel level, and
it should be left up to that task killer to decide when to free up memory
There is only one case where having a task killer is a good idea, and that is when you want to kill ONE SPECIFIC APP. Killing all apps is never a good idea. You don’t know what operations they are performing or if they are necessary.
Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker suggests that you should be more worried about CPU usage than what’s going on with your RAM. We agree:
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.
More on how Android has a built-in memory-management system, but also on how killing all tasks is not a good thing (via: NextApp):
Android was designed from the ground up as an operating system (OS) for mobile devices. Its built-in application and memory-management systems were engineered with battery life as one of the most critical concerns.
The Android OS does not work like a desktop operating system. On a desktop OS, like Windows, Mac OS X, or Ubuntu Linux, the user is responsible for closing programs in order to keep a reasonable amount of memory available. On Android, this is not the case. The OS itself automatically removes programs from memory as memory is needed. The OS may also preload applications into memory which it thinks might soon be needed.
Having lots of available empty memory is not a good thing. It takes the same amount of power to hold “nothing” in memory as it does to hold actual data. So, like every other operating system in use today, Android does its best to keep as much important/likely-to-be-used information in memory as possible.
As such, using the task manager feature of SystemPanel to constantly clear memory by killing all apps is strongly NOT RECOMMENDED. This also applies to any other task killer / management program. Generally speaking, you should only “End” applications if you see one which is not working correctly. The “End All” feature can be used if your phone/device is performing poorly and you are uncertain of the cause.
And we could go on for hours with source after source on why task killers do nothing but work against Android, but you probably get the point now don’t you? Ready for a quick recap? OK.
Basically, Android keeps tasks handy because it thinks you’ll want to perform them again in a very short amount of time. If you don’t, it will clear them out for you. It also likes to keep as many things handy as possible so that the overall performance of your device is top notch. If Android were to completely kill off everything that your phone is doing, then it would require more resources to restart all of them and you would likely run into slowness and battery drains. By keeping certain things available to you, your phone is actually running better than it would without. So please, stop killing off tasks and let Android do the work for you.
Your goal for the week is wash your brain of the idea that having little RAM available is a bad thing. The more RAM available, the more Android will find ways to use it up which means your battery will be dead in hours. Instead, let it manage itself, so that you can spend more time playing Angry Birds or reading Droid Life.
All good now?
A simple reboot clears the list of recent apps. And as others have stated, it's not about running apps but something like the "recent documents" list in Windows 7
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
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.
Ok so I browsed through the market and came across a few apps that I wanna install but not sure whether it will actually do more harm then help.
Memory Booster - Looks good, a lot of positive reviews.
Easy Battery Saver - 253,291 5 star reviews. Any good?
Kaspersky Mobile - I'm using Kaspersky for my PC and it's pretty awesome, can I assume the same for the mobile version?
thank you
I like easy battery saver it works but you have to set it up btw
I'd choose easy battery saver too
Enviado desde mi Galaxy Nexus usando Tapatalk 2
Is there something specific you are trying to achiev or are just generally looking for some apps?
I think the Memory Booster app is some kind of automated taskmanger/taskkiller, sounds a bit weird , can't just pull more memory out of no where.
You did not tell us what kind of phone you use?
There are actually two stances on this kind of topic, one saying one should not interfere with androids built in task control, the other saying one should.
Are you having memory problems/performance issues?
Give the battery saver a try, it's free so no harm done .
Deactivating certain connectivity periodicly and smart screen brightness can really save alot of juice.
I'm not a fan of the battery saver apps, but if you configure them to your personal needs, they can work really well. You will just have to see if that works for you in daily use.
Lets dissect the kaspersky app:
'ANTI-VIRUS' part:
Hm well, the android antivirus programs are not that good in preventing (in my opinion).
Apps on the market with malicious content get pulled quite quickly. So there is not that much risk of running into one when just downloading popular apps from the android market.
If you download apps from untrusted 3rd party sites, it probably will detect alot of the already known malicous ones (what are you doing on those sites the first place though ).
I'm a bit concerned about the 'Automatic, cloud-based scanning of downloaded apps', privacy concerns? I just glanced at it, so this is no profund answer.
How much resources and battery does it consume?
'CALL & SMS FILTER' is a nice feature, if you need it, do you? There are also more lightweight apps out there to do it, if you just need this feature.
'PRIVACY PROTECTION' if you have a lockscreen with pattern or pin, no one can look at your phones content anyways.
If you don't have a lockscreen on, why did you give your phone away or leave it lying around if you have something to hide.
Okay if you are in a relation and your better half expects your phone to be unlocked, it being an anti-virus app is a pretty good excuse when having to explain why an sms and call hiding app is on your phone...
Last but not least 'ANTI-THEFT PROTECTION', this is the feature i would like. Something like this should actually be prebuild into any android phone and accessable through ones google account, i.e. google.com/phonecontrol .
There are more apps who offer this service, i can't really compare them at the moment. So if this feature is what you want, check the competition.
Again i have not used the app, so this is just my outside view.
7€ is not the cheapest app, it is your choice.
Don't solely base your decision on my opinion, but lets wait for some more opinions from other users.
Ive tried battery saver in the past and massively prefer Juice Defender to it.
More set up options and tweaks to apply so you can have your data periodically turned on to check stuff like twitter, mail etc.
I normally take things with a grain of salt that I read on the ol' interweb, however I came across this article on Android Authority (which site I consider somewhat reliable) and it got me to wondering if the information could be true and factual. The article I'm talking about is:
http://www.androidauthority.com/battery-myths-688089/
A couple of sections have me really re-thinking my battery saving tactics. Such as this excerpt:
Myth: Save battery power by killing apps or using an app killer
Aaaaagghh! Stop it! Stop doing it; stop spreading this lie. App killers and their proponents are the homeopathy and anti-vaxxers of the Android world: they don’t actually help and they can possibly make things worse.
There was a stretch of a few months back in, like, 2009 when app killers actually made Android run smoother. Then Android got a lot smarter about how it managed its resources, and all app killers do is suck up the resources they are claiming to protect. They became unnecessary before they even got popular.
Even if you’re just haphazardly murdering apps that seem to be running in the background by force stopping them or swiping them out of the Recent Apps menu, you’re often draining more battery than you’re saving. For one thing, a lot of apps spring right back to life after you kill them, meaning you just spent more resources than if you just left it alone. For another, the biggest battery sucker across the board is your display. If you’re spending screen time, not to mention seconds of your finite human life, needlessly assassinating apps, then you’re playing a game of whack-a-mole that is only wasting your time and your smartphone’s battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Now if the above is true, then I'm wasting time and battery juice using Greenify. Anyone care to ring in on this one??
And then there is this section that has me wondering...
Myth: Disabling services like Bluetooth and Location Services drastically improves battery life
This is another one of those rumors that is still sticking around because it actually used to be good advice. Wi-fi and Bluetooth used to latch onto your smartphone’s battery life like a vampire bat, but today they’re nowhere near so bloodthirsty. And location services are even leaner.
It’s true that disabling all these or going into airplane mode will save some battery life. However, we’re talking a very tiny sliver – like half an hour over the span of an entire day, so the gains are arguably not worth the trouble. Leave the services that you use on the regular running all you want. Your device is designed to handle it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
And so, I come to you members with more experience than I, and ask for your input. Not so much asking for your opinion, but rather for your experience in the references above.
1. I've never used greenify and my SOT ranges from 4-6 hours, depending on rom and usage. I don't kill my apps also. Most of them are running in the background.
2. WiFi location scanning is always on. Bluetooth scanning is off. When I tried switching off wifi scanning, my phone used more juice to locate it's position via GPS.
In the (small) amount of time I spent within the Android community, I gathered that it's just better as is, as Android advances . I just leave the system on stock settings and I don't use any third party App freezer/ optimizer/ hibernator/ killler.
Alright then... Thanks much for the input and for sharing your experiences.
I think I'll freeze Greenify for now, and see how it goes.
Once upon a time, apps such as Greenify were quite useful. Background services and apps would run rampant doing whatever they liked. It was more or less the wild west when it came to things like that.
But starting with Marshmallow, Android really started cracking down on this kind of behavior and began providing the OS and developers with APIs to better manage background activity. With the addition of Doze in Nougat, I would argue that apps such as Greenify are now more or less obsolete.
If anything, a wakelock blocker may still come in handy (especially when dealing with Google Play Services), but some (most?) custom ROMs have modded Doze to remove the built-in exception that it has for Play Services, so even a wakelock blocker is unnecessary.
Remove everything related to Google. Profit.
Fatsodonkey said:
Remove everything related to Google. Profit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So,you mean remove GMS? Ah,sorry,no.I'd rather use a magisk module to force doze gms if it's draining battery.
Mr.Ak said:
So,you mean remove GMS? Ah,sorry,no.I'd rather use a magisk module to force doze gms if it's draining battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I prefer the "Destroy Google" way.
Fatsodonkey said:
I prefer the "Destroy Google" way.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you hate google so much(for whatever reason),why not stop using android then?
Mr.Ak said:
If you hate google so much(for whatever reason),why not stop using android then?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't hate Google. I don't hate companies, but i believe that sometimes companies grow too big and have too much power.
I just hope that in the mobile space there will be a proper GNU/Linux phone.
With desktops things are quite nice nowadays.
Just watched the last 3 weeks of Click off the BBC. On one episode they were on about battery saving apps. Turns out the best one was the built in android battery saver. No app needed.