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Task killer apps " THE TRUTH"

So just wanted to post an update - I've been using my DINC with no app killer for about 2 weeks. The phone's battery life is just a good, if not better than before. Unplugged it at 6:30 this morning and at 4 pm with regular use (a couple calls/texts, an app here and there) it was at 86%. So with all due respect, app killers are a waste of time.
 
Well, my Samsung Captivate shut off by itself yesterday and once this morning, so I removed ATK and seeing if that had anything to do with it.
 
task killers do slow down your phone,although they do make you battery a litlle better, but the reaon they slow down your phne is they are killing apps the your phone needs to run correctly..at least thats what verizon told my sister when she went in and told them her phone was laggy and slow. so if anyone has a task killer i suggest deleting it , it will im prove yur phones performace if yu remove it :D
 
im using samsung galaxy 551 i5510, and the battery was too weak needed charge almost daily then might be because of discharge recharge cycles or install of ATK the battery life has improved a lot and there is no performance lag,

actually the ATK is somewhat crazy first time when you start the app it shows a list of apps running and in that list it shows its name also like doing suicide ;) ,,

i have ignored ATK itself and lookout apart from that if i open market, audio player, google reader, browser etc and even after closing them if i go to ATK i can see them running in the background so i dont understand inspite of closing the app why do they run in the background so for this ATK is really useful and the time frequency of autokill i have kept is 1 hr so during standby only lookout and ATK run in my cell and battery life improved a lot ;)
 
So I have been using my captivate without a task killer for about 2-3 months now. And I must say, everything works great. I no longer find a TK useful. My battery lasts all day, no matter how much I use it and my phone never really runs slow (and if it does, the same thing would happen even if I were to use a task killer).
 
Just create a "running services" widget on one of your screens. Long press on the screen go to shortcut/settings/running services and bingo you have an app killer. You can see what is actually running and kill it if you have to. The only app I have to kill is Ayal music.
 
The phone is smarter about this than we are.
It knows what I use repeatedly and "readies" that for execution and it learns which I need over time.
I have been watching what services are running from a hard boot and it varies on what I have been using.
Let the phone do what we bought it for...be a smartphone.
:)
 
I run ATK as soon as the phone starts up, kill everything including ATK.. I see no difference in the phone's speed, but the battery does last longer, and on a G1 that is important. All my text messages and e-mails get through fine, but once one comes through I run ATK and kill everything again.

Even with ATK at times I find my Google maps app will at times start itself and drain my battery. Not sure what that is about.
 
ajm144k said:
yep docprego's right. there really is no need to have a task killing app. linux systems are made to handle memory different than typical windows does, which is what the majority of people are familiar with, and makes us want to kill every single background process.

ive been running completely fine without any task killer. i've found that changing settings like window animations (settings > sound & display > animation) will have a better, more effective effect on speed.
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Literally has just transformed my android experience! I've been quietly disappointed with the slight lag experienced with my xperia x10i, but now having disabled the animations (which weren't that noticable since comparing) I am much happier with the speed. Thanks a lot!
 
Thanks for that.

however:

1) Does not apply to the Motorola DROID. Our phones don't do both GSM an CDMA - we do CDMA exclusively. The A854 (Milestone) does GSM exclusively.

2) Our DROIDs do not have a battery manager setting at all. We can look at what is going on, but cannot manage it in any other way. Not even on Gingerbread nightlies - yet.

3) We don't have Data manager as a Settings option either. The closest we can get is to go into Airplane mode, which can be readily accessed by the Power Widget. However, I believe that Airplane mode also kills calls and SMS.

4) Autobrightness - Not a bad idea - I'm in GA, but our DROIDs seem to have not as good screens - it is hard to see them under 50% in direct sunlight - regardless of the time of year.

Animation - Great idea

Screen timeout - I use this myself - I was using Locale, and am now switching to Tasker, but I will have it set to the lowest value for when I am in class - and I can use the Power Widget to override if I need to use the TI 83 emulator for calculations, thus needing the screen on longer....

In Pocket Detection - Don't have that.

5) hit and miss - I'm usually within Wireless range, but it auto-reconnects fast enough to not really be an issue.

The rest about the apps - pretty good info.
 
hig4s said:
I read your post, and you are correct, you are not an expert.
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That's why I said it. If you've got something useful to add, do it. If not, keep trolling. :cool:

Based on your illustrious post history here (12 posts in 2 years), I'm sure you've got some quite useful information to share with all of us.
 
Thanks for the tip -- I quit killing apps a long time ago, but I did have a Task Manager still installed. I uninstalled it and it seems like it's a little faster.

My number one thing is screen lag in returning to the home screen when running an app.

Are there any other tune-ups out there for the original Droid? I'm wanting a new phone bad (speed is king for me), but I'd really like to make it for one more push for a few months, to see these new phones coming.
 
Keep it nice in here.

And the screen being the largest battery user on a normal day is only defined within your parameters. My largest users is Pandora over 3G - with the screen *off*.

As I already responded to each point individually earlier, I won't go into them again. I do have one question though:

If your screen is off the majority of the time, my understanding is that auto-brightness is not going to be polling. Is this incorrect? Because if it polls the sensor even when hte screen is off - that is a big problem, and one that needs to be addressed in the Android issues list at Google Code.

Can anyone confirm one way or antoher which is true?
 
Jay3 said:
Thanks for the tip -- I quit killing apps a long time ago, but I did have a Task Manager still installed. I uninstalled it and it seems like it's a little faster.

My number one thing is screen lag in returning to the home screen when running an app.

Are there any other tune-ups out there for the original Droid? I'm wanting a new phone bad (speed is king for me), but I'd really like to make it for one more push for a few months, to see these new phones coming.
Click to expand...

Screen lag is going ot be caused by a number of differnet factors, but all of which add to the same causative agent: low memory.

Even if you only have a handful of apps installed (whereas I have like 140) if those apps have a lot of cache or data associate with them then they are going to eat a lot of your avilable memory up.

If you're running a stock DROID with the stock launcher, the best that you can do is to go through each app in Settings --> Applications --> Manage Applications, taknig a look at how much space they are using, and in particular , how much cache space is being used by each app you ahve installed. Under the All tab you can also view cache use for apps that area installed with the System ROM itself (IOW, those that came with the phone that you cannot remove).

Another thing to look at is SMS and MMS storage - particularly SMS. SMS eats a lot of memory, and when we still had Eclair people were reporting issues with phones when they reached ~200 stored messages or more. If you reguarly use SMS, and need to keep them for whatever reason, I recommend the app SMS Backup & Restore - Android app on AppBrain - it makes a backup of all your SMS into an .XML file that it stores on your SDCard. Using this app, you can, once a month, make a backup, and then erase all the message out of your SMS, starting with a fresh slate - and usign a lot less memory.

The beauty of SMS B&R is that you can also restore any backups at any time - so if you need to go back through them to find some info, it doesn't take very long, depending upon the number of backups you ahve and hte number of SMS per backup, etc.

Finally, make use of Apps2SD whenever possible. Stock DROID users should get the app SDMove - Android app on AppBrain and can also get the sister app SDWatch - Android app on AppBrain to help monitor and move apps to the SDCard that support it.

If you're not on a stock DROID (i.e. you're rooted) then head over to Droid - All Things Root - Android Forums for answers regarding what to do with phones that are rooted and still sluggish - there are a lot more options for rooted users, too many to get into in this post.
 
Thanks for the tips!

I decided to remove the ebay app. A constantly running services seems a high price to pay for info that is available through the browser. I don't need it.
 
How can I view the cache allocation by app at any given time? Checking each app manually is a pain. I recently rebooted, so they were almost all zero. But during times that are laggy, I'd like to be able to look at the running services, look at the cache, and see if I can spot some candidates for removal to speed it up.
 
CRPercodani said:
EXACTLY! I tried telling a lot of new Android users this when the DROID came out but everyone was so use to WinMo/Blackberry/iPhone and thought it would help to always kill tasks.
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It didn't help that Verizon would usually install one when showing customers how to use the market either.
 
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