Explain Task Killers To A Noob

[thalandor46]

I am slightly terrified that this is going to blow up beyond a reasonable discussion, so I'm going to start by asking people to keep things civil ^^;

Background: I picked up my HTC Incredible back in May. It was my first smartphone, and consequently my first Android phone, with 2.1 and HTC Sense. Upon researching apps to pick up, task killers came up frequently. I grabbed Advanced Task Killer and got into the habit of using it right from the start.

This morning, I woke up to a notice that Froyo was ready to be installed on my phone. Sweet! After updating, one of the first things I noticed was that ATK wasn't working. Apps that I would kill would come back up almost immediately. If I wanted to kill an app, I had to go to Settings -> Applications -> Manage applications, and even that wasn't all that reliable.

Upon researching the issue, I came across something curious. It seems just about every search result for 'advanced task killer froyo' ended up being arguments over the idea of task killers in the first place. While there seemed to be some adamant voices on both sides of the argument, there wasn't a whole lot of reasoning behind either side. So rather than just "Task Killers: Yay or Nay?", I'd like to ask what I think is the important question in this argument: Why? Don't tell me what I should or shouldn't do, but rather explain to me why I should or shouldn't do so

I would like to add for my personal case, performance is not an issue. I've never really had any performance issues on my Incredible, although I've never had an abundance of apps running due to my task killer habits. I am, however, obsessive about battery life. Over the past few months, it has become clear to me that some apps (for example, Hi AIM, my AIM client of choice) definitely eat up more battery when they are open. The point I'm trying to make, when stating your case, please clarify what aspect (performance, battery life, and/or whatever else) you're referring to.

I'm hoping this can be a topic people can refer to when they end up in a similar situation to mine, so let's make it a nice discussion that's easy to sort through and find answers

Thanks!

 

[EmoTonyB]

do yourself (and us) a favor. search for task killer in the little box up and to the right. there are a ton of threads regarding task killers for and against.

 

[lekky]

here http://www.droid-den.com/android-guides/android-guide-should-i-use-a-task-killer

 

[jdkoreclipse]

Task killers are applications that kill all apps running in the background.....

Now that we kow the definition, lets get to a debate.....

It is debated on wether task killers are helpful or harmful so here are the statistics:

Task killers do kill apps in the background, but with that said, android does implement an internal task killer, located in the ramdisc (which is in the boot.img). Android (as of froyo) is configured to kill the app that was dormant longest as it refreshes the ram. When it refreshes the ram, it kills apps, frees or uses up ram. With task killers, they just kill all apps, no questions asked....so they may actually be harming the system process, or then again, maybe not.

So now that the technical stuff is out of the way, lets put it into persoective:

Taks killers are a good battery saver, just dont OVERUSE it. I faithfuly use a task killer, but that doesnt mean that i kill EVERY app after i use it...THAT IS WHAT MAY HARM SYSTEM PROCESS, but just one kill after bootup and the ocasional kill after you have opened a lot of apps wont hurt.

And ultimately, its what your phone can handle. My phone is rock solid ( i have an Incredible too) and its handled just about everything i have done to it.