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I have read some good number of articles about using or not using a task killer on android phones, I am leaning at the moment to not having one (as i have not installed one and i have had my phone. For about a week or two now). I am extremely interested in hearing some opinions flrom my fellow xda members.
Thanks in advanced for some friendly debate over the issue
-Dave
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
There are already numerous threads about this. Do a quick research and you'll find lots of debates going on.
For example, http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=744101
What's your point to start a new one?
You only need it in emergencies. At first I used it often and decided I was just paranoid and uninstalled it. Device then worked more smoothly then when I was using it. You may get a little nervous about it saying that it only has 70M left, but that's not really true. Most of the apps that you exit out of don't get used by the CPU anymore and just sit in memory (not doing anything). When you launch another app, that applications gets moved out of memory and the new one gets active.
If you install a lot of 3 star apps (crappy apps) and notice that your battery is going low fast or phone getting hot, then use it as it is an emergency. Just try not to make it a habit.
Do not use a task killer unless an app is frozen! It only slows down your phone and causes bugs. Your apps have to reopen every time you want to use it, which only slows things down. It's also possible for apps to lose data because they get stopped prematurely.
Besides, freeing up ram won't make your phone go faster. If the ram isn't being used, then it's doing nothing at all. A phone with 500MB free would be just as fast as a phone with 20MB free.
I used advanced task killer for a while but uninstalled it because i couldnt come up with a set of tasks that i would always want killed.
Plus the purist in me doesnt like the idea of automatically terminating a thread without some kind of collaboration between the threads involved. How does task killer know that any given thread is at a good stopping point?
It seems that background tasks were not nearly as big a drain on battr life as having gps on all the time. Once I installed the power widget on my home screen toggling gps took care of that.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
This is my 4th Android phone, and I am still a little unclear on how memory works on this machine. I use AutoKiller, yet I am still confused. As I understand it, 100mb or 5mb free, it shouldn't affect the operation of the device until something needs more than the available and has to clear room. So, how does this work, exactly? I am continually running low on the Triumph, yet if I set the preset in AutoKiller higher, I begin to lose services ranging from alarm clocks to social networking notifications. Where do I begin to find balance? Am I missing something?
I haven't had a problem with starting to lose services like the alarm clock but I was seeing the system significantly slow down even as I kept all unnecessary tasks from running. So I figured that I would root my system, and get rid of all the pre-installed software that I didn't use. The funny thing is that after I rooted the system all the memory issues went away, and the system really flies now. I don't know what changed, when I rooted it. But I am not seeing the same slow responses, the constant starting of tasks that I don't use and so forth. I know that its not an answer so to say, but I thought that I would share so as to maybe help you, or see if it happened with someone else.
HitchHiker said:
I haven't had a problem with starting to lose services like the alarm clock but I was seeing the system significantly slow down even as I kept all unnecessary tasks from running. So I figured that I would root my system, and get rid of all the pre-installed software that I didn't use. The funny thing is that after I rooted the system all the memory issues went away, and the system really flies now. I don't know what changed, when I rooted it. But I am not seeing the same slow responses, the constant starting of tasks that I don't use and so forth. I know that its not an answer so to say, but I thought that I would share so as to maybe help you, or see if it happened with someone else.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply. It's nice to hear other experiences. I am already rooted, and AutoKiller requires root. I'm just being patient and hoping that a custom ROM can solve problems.
Rooting shouldn't change anything except whether or not the phone is rooted. That's it. Task killers rarely help because those apps you kill just come back as soon as you look away. So I would personally recommend you only kill the miscreant apps, and ultimately remove them if you can.
Sent from my Frankenphone using Tapatalk
primetechv2 said:
Rooting shouldn't change anything except whether or not the phone is rooted. That's it. Task killers rarely help because those apps you kill just come back as soon as you look away. So I would personally recommend you only kill the miscreant apps, and ultimately remove them if you can.
Sent from my Frankenphone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Autokiller doesn't work that way. It merely changes Android's already existing internal programming to be a touch more aggressive. It does nothing on its own, merely giving you an interface to alter Android's own values for task management and app priority.
What I really need to know is if that aggression is necessary. Android's default minimum for memory is 24mb (that is the level at which the system will kill off empty apps). I can raise that number, but is it necessary? Some one told me that free memory amount is irrelevant in Android. If that's true, what is the point in making sure my system has 100mb free as opposed to 20mb?
I wouldn't think that extra memory management app is necessary, the only problems any android 2.2 phone (or any android) has are apps that are coded porely are installed. Just use a app that shows cpu usage. If a app is porely written you will see it..... those are the ones to uninstall.....not kill, uninstall.
tsac said:
I wouldn't think that extra memory management app is necessary, the only problems any android 2.2 phone (or any android) has are apps that are coded porely are installed. Just use a app that shows cpu usage. If a app is porely written you will see it..... those are the ones to uninstall.....not kill, uninstall.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like I said, the app merely gives me a UI to alter Android's already existing internal programming in regards to service priority. I am just trying to better understand how Android does it's work.
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.
I've ready many posts stating that the Android system does a good job managing RAM.. Over the past couple of weeks.. once every 2 days or so.. my phone starts bogging down something fierce.. almost locked up. I run advanced task manager and my available ram is around 20-25. I kill a few apps, and the phone works fine for a bit. Eventually, I just reboot it.
From my experience, it's not doing such a great job managing ram on its own.. If the phone is crawling to a stand still.. you would think the OS would manage it.. it's not.
I don't get it..
schmit said:
I've ready many posts stating that the Android system does a good job managing RAM.. Over the past couple of weeks.. once every 2 days or so.. my phone starts bogging down something fierce.. almost locked up. I run advanced task manager and my available ram is around 20-25. I kill a few apps, and the phone works fine for a bit. Eventually, I just reboot it.
From my experience, it's not doing such a great job managing ram on its own.. If the phone is crawling to a stand still.. you would think the OS would manage it.. it's not.
I don't get it..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uninstall advanced task killer. Problem solved
Pin it to Win it.
haha, then I have to reboot when it slows down.. I just downloaded autostarts.. just shut down a crap load of items from starting up.. I think that will do.
Linux (and android) have the mentality "unused ram is wasted ram" so having lots of free ram is only good if launching memory intensive apps/programs.
tahahawa said:
Linux (and android) have the mentality "unused ram is wasted ram" so having lots of free ram is only good if launching memory intensive apps/programs.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The problem being, as soon as I drop to around 30-50 available.. the phone is extremely sluggish. I wait, wait, wait for the OS to shut down some apps, it never does. It just gets worse to where the phone is not usable. So a reboot or closing apps has to take place. It's not managing the ram at all..
schmit said:
The problem being, as soon as I drop to around 30-50 available.. the phone is extremely sluggish. I wait, wait, wait for the OS to shut down some apps, it never does. It just gets worse to where the phone is not usable. So a reboot or closing apps has to take place. It's not managing the ram at all..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry to hear that your phone is buggy but task killers are a nuisance. You kill them visually but they sprung up in a few secs or mins hence taking the freed space you just created.
Next time when your phone is lagging so much, go to manage applications > running applications and check what is using your Ram so much. Most of the time, rogue apps come into RAM and due to lack of a good ram management in those apps, they tend to stay there hence eating away your ram.
cricketAC said:
Sorry to hear that your phone is buggy but task killers are a nuisance. You kill them visually but they sprung up in a few secs or mins hence taking the freed space you just created.
Next time when your phone is lagging so much, go to manage applications > running applications and check what is using your Ram so much. Most of the time, rogue apps come into RAM and due to lack of a good ram management in those apps, they tend to stay there hence eating away your ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks.. I'm not using the task killer to kill any apps.. you're right, they pop right back up. I found if I long press, I can do it through the system, which keeps it closed.
Autostarts seems to be working very well.. None of the typical apps are starting up.. but 2 are annoying me.. they start up every time.. Google Drive and Gallery
schmit said:
Thanks.. I'm not using the task killer to kill any apps.. you're right, they pop right back up. I found if I long press, I can do it through the system, which keeps it closed.
Autostarts seems to be working very well.. None of the typical apps are starting up.. but 2 are annoying me.. they start up every time.. Google Drive and Gallery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I always uninstall/freeze my gallery because it's known to eat ram.
Try turning off Google Drive in accounts sync and try using QuickPic instead of gallery
Sent from my LG-P999 using Tapatalk 2
schmit said:
I've ready many posts stating that the Android system does a good job managing RAM.. Over the past couple of weeks.. once every 2 days or so.. my phone starts bogging down something fierce.. almost locked up. I run advanced task manager and my available ram is around 20-25. I kill a few apps, and the phone works fine for a bit. Eventually, I just reboot it.
From my experience, it's not doing such a great job managing ram on its own.. If the phone is crawling to a stand still.. you would think the OS would manage it.. it's not.
I don't get it..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand your frustrating. Living and working in a windows world. I was uncomfortable with removing my task master of choice. Android works better now. If you have questions please pm me.
.
Android will try to do its job when cleaning RAM, but if a lot of badly written apps are running and all hogging resources, Android itself will still try to respect those wishes. Apps have priorities when they need to be killed, but if all apps say they're number 1 in priority, then there's no room to negotiate.
The best solution is to find and uninstall the rogue applications. Period.
Sent from my LG-P999 using xda premium
Well if its happening recently, uninstall your most recent apps. Also Google voice gives me problems, try uninstalling that
Sent from my Handheld Portal Device
zoppp said:
Well if its happening recently, uninstall your most recent apps. Also Google voice gives me problems, try uninstalling that
Sent from my Handheld Portal Device
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Uninstalling most recently installed apps is a good start. I use Google Voice all the time without problems and any extra battery drains. It's a memory hog (35+ MB sometimes, with a Google Update service being redundant since there's the Play Market already).
Supercharger v6
If your rooted, try using the supercharger v6 script.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=16635544#post16635544
Anthony1596 said:
If your rooted, try using the supercharger v6 script.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=16635544#post16635544
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think running clean apps and having good oom settings key to a good running phone. The v6 supercharger is a great however running the script manager causes excessive partial wakelocks therefore draining alot of battery at idle and in comparison to the performance gain I don't feel its beneficial. Our phones have sufficient ram if used properly. However if you are running dirty apps that are constantly syncing or updating or whatever dirty things they do that is what causes "bog down"
Anyways back to my point just change your oom groupings and forget running scripts... just my opinion tho
Pin it to Win it.
I find ICS on the G2X have a really hard time managing ram. I keep running out of memory. In Gingerbread, I don't get this problem.
I.R.Chevy said:
I think running clean apps and having good oom settings key to a good running phone. The v6 supercharger is a great however running the script manager causes excessive partial wakelocks therefore draining alot of battery at idle and in comparison to the performance gain I don't feel its beneficial. Our phones have sufficient ram if used properly. However if you are running dirty apps that are constantly syncing or updating or whatever dirty things they do that is what causes "bog down"
Anyways back to my point just change your oom groupings and forget running scripts... just my opinion tho
Pin it to Win it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why would you need to have script manager running?
If you don't have init.d support, you can use it to just launch 99supercharger.sh on boot.
You don't leave SManager running in the background or anything.
Of course, if you have init.d support, it's just becomes ingrained into the OS and with zeor overhead.
nitrogen618 said:
I find ICS on the G2X have a really hard time managing ram. I keep running out of memory. In Gingerbread, I don't get this problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The enforced HW-acceleration feature of ICS costs RAM, as well as the extra eye-candy. I read a recent article that speculated JellyBean will likely optimize ICS like 2.2 optimized 2.1. Hopefully they'll bring in some of Linaro's optimizations.
zeppelinrox said:
Why would you need to have script manager running?
If you don't have init.d support, you can use it to just launch 99supercharger.sh on boot.
You don't leave SManager running in the background or anything.
Of course, if you have init.d support, it's just becomes ingrained into the OS and with zeor overhead.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So you would use script manager to setup all your presets and then remove it leaving the supercharger settings intact?
I used your scripts for a long time and found the kernelizer and bulletproof launcher/apps were sweet but I thought I needed to have a script manager to run them.
Perhaps I am ignorant as to the other shenanigans?
Pin it to Win it.
So, I've heard the new update 2.21.401.10 still has the well known limited multitasking issues (see YT videos for One X, it's the same for us: http://www.youtube.com/results?sear...0.0.0.119.352.3j1.4.0...0.0...1ac.R68YKWQ8QnE )?? Is it true? How can we persuade HTC to keep standard Android multitasking?
I've also heard the audio issues (crackles, trashed sounds, some micro-stutters sound-related. You can easily notice this with games, f.e. Pinball Arcade or Mame4Droid etc. Won't hear these problems on GS2 and other Android phones) are still there too, so the audio driver is still the same.
Should I go back to GS2? Multitasking problem is very important for me...
I don't have issues with sound now, never have. A lot of games ether aren't compatible completely (gta 3), and others are just trash audio. If you want to test audio run a GOOD mp3 file, if it crackles its your phone....
Sent from my HTC One S running Axiom S
the multitasking of the one X and S isnt' bugged, it is in this way for a choice of HTC. Basically the system doesn't left completly open apps but it freeze them which is almost the same of restart the app from zero more or less. This is because HTC want to keep some resources free to have a more fluid sense experience.
Anyway if you have an unlocked device you can flash this script http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=27318828#post27318828 that should give you real multitasking and leave the cool HTC interface ( the task manager ) to swith from an app to another. I would try it but I don't want to unlock my device at the moment.
none of the scripts work. wait till developers will fix it on kernel level. no other solutions here.
HTC One S via XDA
hexaae said:
So, I've heard the new update 2.21.401.10 still has the well known limited multitasking issues (see YT videos for One X, it's the same for us: )?? Is it true? How can we persuade HTC to keep standard Android multitasking?
I've also heard the audio issues (crackles, trashed sounds, some micro-stutters sound-related. You can easily notice this with games, f.e. Pinball Arcade or Mame4Droid etc. Won't hear these problems on GS2 and other Android phones) are still there too, so the audio driver is still the same.
Should I go back to GS2? Multitasking problem is very important for me...
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I agree with hexaae. It's worth nothing having a super-fluid UI if it means killing your opened browser when you try to live it in background. You just can't browse between browser and email: how is this supposed to be called multitasking??
I really believe this choice of HTC's is senseless... On a smartphone with 1GB of RAM...
Edit1: by the way, what is the "background processes limit" option in "development options" supposed to do? Possible values are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, default.
Edit2: would it be an idea to make a poll and see how many people would be interested in this?
mannequin said:
none of the scripts work. wait till developers will fix it on kernel level. no other solutions here.
HTC One S via XDA
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why do you say that it doesn't work? On the thread some guys has reported that it works!
light_n_roses said:
why do you say that it doesn't work? On the thread some guys has reported that it works!
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It worked for me, problem was the battery started draining like crazy. Which got me thinking, the reason HTC did this was battery life. Nothing else. Sense was still just as smooth for me, but apps would multi task like I used to, but my battery would last less than half as long. So I went back to stock and am getting decent battle life again.
Sent from my H1S using XDA Premium.
MadJoe said:
It worked for me, problem was the battery started draining like crazy. Which got me thinking, the reason HTC did this was battery life. Nothing else. Sense was still just as smooth for me, but apps would multi task like I used to, but my battery would last less than half as long. So I went back to stock and am getting decent battle life again.
Sent from my H1S using XDA Premium.
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Well this is quite natural, you should manually clear everything once that you put the phone on stand-by ( and here the cool HTC task manager interface lack of a " close all" button ) or if you don't want to do this you can put task killer widget on the home that kill everything by a tap. Anyway this would kill also the background process not started by you which is not good so HTC should really put a "close everything" button on task manager interface so we can kill just recent apps opened by the user and not from the system.
Sent from my HTC One S using xda app-developers app
it works for about "10 minutes". all script "fixes" are nothing more than a placebo.
mannequin said:
it works for about "10 minutes". all script "fixes" are nothing more than a placebo.
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That is not true. Yes, the multitasking is not stock quality... but the scripts do have a noticeable effect that improves performance (assuming you have enough free memory).
mannequin said:
it works for about "10 minutes". all script "fixes" are nothing more than a placebo.
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this shouldn't be a script ment to improove performance, this should be something that it works or not, an off/on ...
light_n_roses said:
Well this is quite natural, you should manually clear everything once that you put the phone on stand-by ( and here the cool HTC task manager interface lack of a " close all" button ) or if you don't want to do this you can put task killer widget on the home that kill everything by a tap. Anyway this would kill also the background process not started by you which is not good so HTC should really put a "close everything" button on task manager interface so we can kill just recent apps opened by the user and not from the system.
Sent from my HTC One S using xda app-developers app
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It lacks the close all option because it is not needed. You dont have to close any apps unless they are something that need to be operating all the time like music player when it is playing songs or navigator and stuff like that. There is no difference for your batterylife whether you clear the "recent apps" list or not. And its called "recent apps" for a reason because it means that it has nothing to do with the fact is that application actually running or not. It has always being like that in android. It just makes it easier to jump between apps.
Using task killers and such only increases battery usage since the app it has closed needs to be loaded again when you use it the next time instead of it being just unfreezed from the memory.
HTC has set the automatic killer which kills apps on the background when running out of memory way too aggressive when you compare that to how it works on vanilla ICS or even older HTC phones running android 2.2 or 2.3.
However the latest update made multitask way better for One S. And Iam talking about the one which updatet android version to 4.0.4. Now you can jump between many apps without the fear of them closing immediately so Iam very happy with that now and it works as its should be.
Paqu1 said:
However the latest update made multitask way better for One S. And Iam talking about the one which updatet android version to 4.0.4. Now you can jump between many apps without the fear of them closing immediately so Iam very happy with that now and it works as its should be.
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I've read comments by users who installed latest update and still have the limited multitasking issue (I'm waiting for the OTA update in Italy). Are you saying instead this has been "fixed"...?
Moved To Q&A
Please post all questions in the Q&A section
hexaae said:
I've read comments by users who installed latest update and still have the limited multitasking issue (I'm waiting for the OTA update in Italy). Are you saying instead this has been "fixed"...?
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Well its working fine for me. I can now jump between 4-6 fairly light programs and 2-3 heavier ones without the previous app always closing like before the update.
Paqu1 said:
Well its working fine for me. I can now jump between 4-6 fairly light programs and 2-3 heavier ones without the previous app always closing like before the update.
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Actually I still don't know because I do not have the last updated, I'm waiting that it goes online on automatic update.....
Hope you are right!
Paqu1 said:
Well its working fine for me. I can now jump between 4-6 fairly light programs and 2-3 heavier ones without the previous app always closing like before the update.
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Please can you test this?
Open Google in the stock browser and type in something to search (but don't start searching!)... then switch between other apps and finally go back to the browser. Does it still reload and delete your input text?
I'm going to test the script now. Available memory is not an issue for me, as I removed Sense and am running Nova Launcher. My available memory usually sits around +230, ranging from 170-270. Haven't seen it drop below that. As for battery life, as long as you actually use the HTC multitask button and kill the apps that you don't want to go back to, the battery shouldn't really be affected, or at least the only effect will be a result of the apps that you actually want running, so it's a trade off, right? Keep in mind that means not killing the processes that will be automatically restarted by Android (ie using an auto task killer, or some pre Froyo type apps), only user apps that you recently launched and are now killing.
tgtoys said:
As for battery life, as long as you actually use the HTC multitask button and kill the apps that you don't want to go back to, the battery shouldn't really be affected, or at least the only effect will be a result of the apps that you actually want running, so it's a trade off, right? Keep in mind that means not killing the processes that will be automatically restarted by Android (ie using an auto task killer, or some pre Froyo type apps), only user apps that you recently launched and are now killing.
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Oh god, didn't I just explained this few post earlier? You dont have to do any of that since it DOESNT have any impact to your battery life. Go ahead and test it if you dont believe me.
hexaae said:
Please can you test this?
Open Google in the stock browser and type in something to search (but don't start searching!)... then switch between other apps and finally go back to the browser. Does it still reload and delete your input text?
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Ok, I just did what you asked. After doing that with the default browser I was able to jump between Dolphin HD which had two tabs open, youtube app and chrome without any of them closing. And I even went to home screen between them. I think thats pretty good compared how it worked previously. Because then often it was enough if I just jumped to homescreen and then right back the previous app to make it close.
Confirmed.
Official stock ROM, via OTA, ver. 2.31.401.5... and there IS multitasking, finally! Task manager is much more conservative (around 70-80% of cases) with executed apps in the multitasking-history-menu...
Yes, also the browser now won't reload pages if you switch to the mail app for a moment and go back...
~200MB free mem.