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CPU processes killing battery

T

tuffluck

Member
sometimes i find random processes killing my battery, a lot of the times even when i never opened the app. weatherbug is a common one, but the other day it was redbox and i opened task manager and couldn't find it running. that's also happened with some other random programs. is there any app that will pay attention to apps running in the background and close them if they have no reason to be running? like redbox in this case...thanks.
 
tuffluck said:
sometimes i find random processes killing my battery, a lot of the times even when i never opened the app. weatherbug is a common one, but the other day it was redbox and i opened task manager and couldn't find it running. that's also happened with some other random programs. is there any app that will pay attention to apps running in the background and close them if they have no reason to be running? like redbox in this case...thanks.
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Hello tuffluck.

You can manage the services on most non-system widgets and apps that update and/or run in the background. You mention one of the worse offenders: Weather Bug; I'd toss it for Palmary Pro or even Accuweather. But I'd also manage resources by setting that and any other updating stuff (social networking, Gmail etc) to update manually on demand rather than in the back ground. ;)

Task managers are chancy, as they can cause resource/battery drain by stopping services which have an autostart command in the system, so a "stop-start-stop-start" loop occurs in the back ground. I leave all task managers/killers out of the picture altogether. :)
 
The advantage of Watchdog is that it only monitors CPU usage. Which is the only thing that you need to keep an eye on (not what apps are in memory).

So, once you set your white list (i.e. mission critical apps to you, such as gmail, etc) you can set a low CPU usage warning level and find out that some apps tend to ramp up and use a lot of CPU (not going to be petty and name facebook as the biggest offender of this - but I could).
 
gtbarry said:
The advantage of Watchdog is that it only monitors CPU usage. Which is the only thing that you need to keep an eye on (not what apps are in memory).

So, once you set your white list (i.e. mission critical apps to you, such as gmail, etc) you can set a low CPU usage warning level and find out that some apps tend to ramp up and use a lot of CPU (not going to be petty and name facebook as the biggest offender of this - but I could).
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hmmmmmm now i'm interested. gonna check it out now......thanx for the tip.
 
alicepattinson said:
Oh! I thought task killers really help your device have a good battery life.
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yeah that is an old wives tale.....lol

the android os does a pretty good job at managing resources when it comes to running apps in the background. a lot of task killers and managers may see that an app is running in the background when it in actuality it will be just at rest ready to go when needed. by kiiling these apps in the background the app will eventually just start right backup with it running and it can have the reverse effect.

the link i provided explains it pretty well.

watchdog is different in that it monitors cpu useage which is way different. i just downloaded it now and will be playing with it for a bit.
 
You can set it to launch when the phone starts. And according to watchdog it doesn't use much cpu (oh the irony!).
 
gtbarry said:
You can set it to launch when the phone starts. And according to watchdog it doesn't use much cpu (oh the irony!).
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Where is that option in the free version? I don't see it.

Also not sure but can you set it to auto kill when processes not on white list go above the threshold?
 
tuffluck said:
Where is that option in the free version? I don't see it.

Also not sure but can you set it to auto kill when processes not on white list go above the threshold?
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Hmmmm...

under Preferences I think I confused "persistent notifcation" for this. Sorry. But I checked everything under preferences and there is nothing about starting or not with the boot up process. So, I assuming that it does begin on startup automatically, as everytime I have restarted my phone, watchdog has always launched and I have never had to launch it manually. Is this your experience?

I don't think watchdog will auto kill a process that goes over threshold. I don't see a setting for it. What you get instead is an alert in notifications then you will be taken to the app where you can kill the app manually. I am not a progammer of any kind, but I don't think you would want an auto kill. As it may be a vital system component that is over threshold and killing it would crash your phone. Just guessing on that.

On the bright side, I am set at 30% and the only apps that I am ever notified about are facebook and (very rarely) the Play Store.
 
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