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Hi everyone
I have been a cell tech freak for about 10 years now, and have owned almost all the smart phones that have come out. Although am not a programmer, but I try to use the phones to the fullest, and have recently decided to share my experience with you all by writing my first in-depth review on the lines of 'a day in the life of...' for each of the current hot phones - HD7, Vibrant and iPhone 4. However, before I begin on that review, there are a few questions that I need clarity on (could not find through search):
1. What does the option 'run behing lock screen' mean? In my case, I turned it on with autoupdate on 10 mins for facebook app, but when I reopened the app hours later, it was not updated.
2. Notification system - is there a system to collect notifications, similar to android? or this is more like iphone where the popup comes and goes away?
3. Push notifications - how does it work? for example, I use task lists with reminders set for online services like rememberthemilk.com, however even though I have alarms on, nothing happens on the device.
4. Is there an official website/etc to give feedback to wp7 team or vote on new features? Would love to aid in the development.
5. I normally guage the suitability of a platform by assessing how many of the good developers on other platforms are planning or have started developing for a new platform as well. For example, seesmic client on WP7 is good and has seen consistent improvement. What other major developers are we sure about that have / have not begun work on WP&? (examples: tweetdeck team, hootsuite, nimbuzz, trillian, etc)
Would be great if I got your feedback on these. Cant wait to share my review on all three phones
1. It means the app will continue running even if you "lock" the screen. It has nothing to do with multitasking - which the OS does not currently do (for third party apps).
2. It comes and goes. Unfortunately. IMO it goes away too fast as well, I hear the notification sound but by the time I've picked up the phone all I see is the notification sliding away.
3. Depends on how the developer has implemented it. However, you cannot get an alarm going off without having the app running - and since you can't multitask, well...
4. No
5. From what I've seen pretty much all the usual suspects have already or are planning to deploy on WP7. Both the marketplace and developer uptake is higher than what it was for iOS/Android. There are a few well-knows devs holding out, but that's their loss really.
for 4. no official way but read this article http://www.wpcentral.com/how-provide-microsoft-feedback-about-wp7
2. Collected notifications are displayed on the bottom of the lockscreen.
Thanks for the answers. I have a couple of other things though:
1. I have assigned a custom ring to my wife's number from the people hub, however whenever she calls me from her number the generic ringtone rings...what gives?
2. When u mean it runs under the lock screen, does that mean exactly this: If I open an app that has the option to run under lock screen and autoupdate after x minutes, and if I lock the screen while the app is still running in the foreground, it will continue to autoupdate in the background..?
Thanks people appreciate it
My phone before moving to android was a n900 with maemo. Problem I have is that with that you had card based multitasking which for example you could be playing a YouTube video on the browser or a app. Then minimize it and still hear it running in the background while you text...with android the app seems to just freeze which is what IV always hated about iPhones...
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
P.S By freezing I mean freezing the state of the app as opposed to "crashing" lol
What exactly are u stating you say its bad but then u complain it just freezes.???? If I may add, android does this and over time shuts off the app....iphone usually doesn't all the time..... And unless your playing music in the backround I find no need to be running music while on the phone doing stuff, it saves ram.....also there's an app for that (possibly) pun intended
Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using XDA App
Get a task killer? I've had no problems with freezing. I'm actually streaming music from Slacker radio right now; no slowdown at all.
Sent from my Droid Incredible running Myn's Warm Two Point Two RLS5.3.
I dont mean the phone freezes lol I mean android freezes the state of the app rather than letting it carry on running fully as maemo would..
Just wondering if there is a way around this..
Im pretty sure the n900 was underpowered compared to a Nexus S hence why I thought it would be able to keep apps running not in a "frozen state" in the background...
Oh. Never mind then, sorry about that lol. I'm not sure how to prevent that.
Sent from my Droid Incredible running Myn's Warm Two Point Two RLS5.3.
@sottyc
Multitasking of OS doesn't mean every app is always minimized - that would be really bad. It means app could run in background if it want. YouTupe app doesn't want to do that and this makes much sense for me.
You could try to find an app to play YouTube videos in the background, but I don't think this is a good idea. Phone isn't a PC, you know ;-)
As a user you shouldn't notice any difference to your app's behaviour whether it's frozen or even killed in the meantime. As a developer you can influence, to a degree, your app's priority, or create a service, so that android doesn't freeze or kill your app - it still will in extreme cases. In most cases, however, you shouldn't need to.
You wouldn't have an enjoyable experience running youtube and anything else simultaneously. Phones just aren't that powerful, although the dual cores will probably be an improvement.
This is what alot of people dont get...its not to do with performance..My PC back in the day had less power than modern phones and it still worked fine with windows 98 lol...
As said the N900 is underpowered compared to most android devices and that could run anything in background in fact to could have loads of apps open and keep running while you do other stuff..
Youtube might seem a stupid one but I only use it to listen to music so can be useful to be running..
I dont think its anything to do with power, its the OS not being able to cope...
You cant even run online radio via flash via a website and minimize it so you can keep listening.
There are many uses for this...just never thought android does not like to cope with a load..
To say that the OS cannot cope with multi-tasking is like saying linux cannot cope with multitasking. What you describe are design decisions of the developers of the apps you mention. So, I guess, you should get apps that work for you.
The things you are talking about, Youtube streaming and running Flash, are resource intensive.
Multitasking with these is not the same thing as editing a document and periodically checking your email account ot updating your FB status!
@sottyc
As I told you: you could create an app which will play music from youtube or from WWW in the background. But developers don't do that, because this isn't a great idea - no matter which OS you use.
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.
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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.
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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
Hello,
I'm considering purchasing One X but after reading so many posts about multitasking issues I have serious doubts. I can not really check this since it takes time to see the issue but how if I don't use Sense (use alternative launcher like GoLauncher, will I still have this issue or Sense is bigger then just laucher itself.
artisticcheese said:
Hello,
I'm considering purchasing One X but after reading so many posts about multitasking issues I have serious doubts. I can not really check this since it takes time to see the issue but how if I don't use Sense (use alternative launcher like GoLauncher, will I still have this issue or Sense is bigger then just laucher itself.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sense is bigger than the launcher. Sense affects a lot of the core phone's features can can't be removed with just a launcher. In this particular case, Sense affects memory management, as well as the actual multitasking app itself.
Let's put it this way. If you're playing a game like say... Radiant Defense (awesome game, btw) that takes a while to complete a level and you get a text message... switching to the messaging app will actually cause the game to close. Now you can use the "multitasking" app to go back to the game, but the game will reload. It will not leave off where you left it.
If that sounds like something that would bother you a lot... I'd avoid the phone. HTC has even said that this is a core Sense 4 FEATURE, not a defect. So they won't be fixing it.
Personally don't think this really warrants a new thread, you probably should have just asked in the ongoing discussion on this.
Haven't tried an alternate launcher yet, so I can't comment on that. But as to the basic question of "how bad" the issue is, I think it depends greatly on how you use your phone, and what you expect from it. Obviously, HTC expects most people to be okay with it, or they wouldn't have tweaked it this way. Only had the phone for a few days, but so far the memory management doesn't seem much different from how the HTC Flyer does it, and I've been fine with that (having owned it since June 2011).
Like posted above, Sense is more than just a launcher. The multi-task changes are likely deep in the kernel.
To me, it is not a big deal. I don't like anything running in the background anyway. And for that matter, the number 1 app in the past a typical Android user uses is Auto Task killer which serves the exact same purpose as the new Sense 4.0. I suspect a lot of those Auto Tasker kill users now also the ones who complain about HTC's feature.
Either way, the biggest problem is with Android itself. There isn't any uniform way to inform OS that an app requires to remain running in background (unless you created a service) can be kept that way. And there is no way for an app that doesn't do anything in the background to be suspended without using any system resources. For later, both iOS and WP7 have much better implementation.
For many years now, I use Google Listen as my podcast player everyday. It works in most times while in the background but a lot of occasions, this app will be closed by OS while I'm listening to the podcast. This behavior is the same on couple different Android phones (samsung and now HTC One X). So, if google's own app can't even stay alive in background in various Android phones, it speaks volume that multi-tasking is a over-hyped feature. What HTC did is not necessary bad to everyone. For example, my Samsung phones (SGS, SGS2 and GTab 10.1) doesn't auto kill bakcground tasks (still kills my GListen) but they all lags badly from time to time.
For what it worth, I can use Google Listen in the background while running Google Nav app in the fore ground for a few hours without problem (other than occasionally Listen get closed for no reason).
I have had mine for 2 weeks and only knew about a "problem" from reading these threads.
In all in how you use it. First reply answered it best
ricktat said:
I have had mine for 2 weeks and only knew about a "problem" from reading these threads.
In all in how you use it. First reply answered it best
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Click to collapse
Agreed. The only app I use for streaming in the background is subsonic, which functions just fine.
Also I have the very very slight annoyance that games have to completely reload if you exit them and don't switch back very very quickly. So if I get a phone call and go right back to game it's fine, but if I go web browse or something else and go back the game has to reload. This is mitigated somewhat by the raw speed of the phone, as game loading doesn't take very long (unless the game is a ****ty port like PvZ).
To avoid confusion, lets just keep this conversation with the ongoing one here. Thanks.
Thread closed.
Hi all, I'm sorry if this is not the correct place to post this. But I hope the Mods will replace it where appropriate.
I just was wondering if there is a way to stop that annoying reloading of web pages when I push the browser to background process in my old Android 4.0.3 device. It so consumed data. Is there any way to keep the pages in memory or something?
Thanks
Hi,
As far as I know, it's because of Android cleaning unused programs from memory (RAM) when it's getting full, and on lower specs phones it happens pretty quickly, although I don't have accurate numbers here.
It's a core feature of Android, so I'm not sure there is a way to bypass, limit it or whitelist programs, perhaps on rooted phones, but I'm eager to know if it's possible.
But, is it the same on newer devices? I hope not, cos it's so lame.
So that's it... I just can't do anything unless I root. Hmmm...
Thanks for your comment though.
I can't answer for sure, but on all my devices it's the same problem, even under KitKat.
I suppose my RAM isn't enough, but someone would have to confirm if the problem still exists on high end devices like S4 or G2.
I don't know what you'll get here by rooting your device, cause all of mine are rooted but sometimes I still get the problem.
Well at least you can delete some bloatware so it's never a bad idea if you feel confident rooting the phone.
For repro, I usually do this, between each step, just press the Home button to return to the home screen :
- Launch a heavy game such as Dead Trigger 2 or Real Racing 3, or even a smaller one like Subway Surfers
- Launch Chrome, open something simple like Google News for mobiles
- Open the camera, no need to take a pic but just open it and go back to home straightaway
- Open Gmail, or another mail app
- Open Play Store
- Try to go back to your game (or browser)... on all of my devices I lose my current level, as it's as I've force quitted... yeah that sucks for low end or old devices like mines, but I don't think there is a workaround.
Just to say, on my iPod Touch 3 I get a better experience for games, although I have to go through reloading on Safari tabs.