do applications ever really "close"?

[moveright]

Brand new to droid land, and was wondering...

yesterday I got a droid 2. from playing with it all day, at the end of the day, it seemed overly sluggish. so, I was wondering ,when I am in an application like the browser, to exit it, I just tap the hooked arrow key on the phone, guess it's like a back button. anyhow, I just tap that until I get back to the home screen. so, if I do that for every application I run, does that mean at the days end, I've got however many apps running in the background?

 

[w_bovine]

Brand new to droid land, and was wondering...

yesterday I got a droid 2. from playing with it all day, at the end of the day, it seemed overly sluggish. so, I was wondering ,when I am in an application like the browser, to exit it, I just tap the hooked arrow key on the phone, guess it's like a back button. anyhow, I just tap that until I get back to the home screen. so, if I do that for every application I run, does that mean at the days end, I've got however many apps running in the background?

Apps in Android may appear to be "running" in that if you look in a task manager of some sort they'll be listed as active, but that doesn't always mean those apps are actually using resources. Android was written in such a way that apps can be open, as it were, yet sit there dormant until called upon to do something.

If your phone is sluggish, perhaps it's time to reboot. I seem to remember seeing someone mention that the manual for one of the Droids says to reboot the phone once a day. Is this true of your Droid? I'm curious about that.

Something to remember as well, if you have many widgets running, or apps that poll for updates (weather app, email etc.) this can put a load on the system.

In case you're wondering about task killers, take a look at this oft referred to article:

Droid Den - Android Guide: Should I Use a Task Killer - Droid Den

 

[thedrizl]

i had a blackberry before my lg ally, and i used to leave it on all the time. i tried that when i first got the ally, and it got really sluggish after a couple of days. started doing a daily reboot and haven't had a problem since.

 

[lexluthor]

Here's more good reading.

Android Developers Blog: Multitasking the Android Way

 

[hd2-droid]

I assume if the developers don't build the app right they can cause your phone to run slow. I've had that problem with apps on almost all phones (iphone, windows, etc).

What I do is reboot my phone every few days. That helps.