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Froyo (Android 2.2) and Advanced Task Killer

B

bkmollen

Newbie
I'm running Froyo (Android 2.2) with Advanced Task Killer (ATK) but it doesn't seem to be working or am I doing something wrong?

I'll kill the apps then just a few minutes later they'll be running again. Thus I'm lucking to get 10-12 hours of battery.
 
Froyo (and android in general) is designed to restart apps and store them in it's memory, so that they're quick to start up when you need then. Killing them is fighting a losing battle, as you've found, because android is designed to restart them.

But don't worry, whilst those apps are stored in RAM they aren't actually active; they don't drain any more power than if they wren't running. What does drain power however, is the startup of each app every time you kill it. If you stop killing them you should (in theory) see improved battery life.

If you do see improvement when you kill an app however, then it's more likely the app isn't sleeping in the background as it should be.
 
Xyro said:
Froyo (and android in general) is designed to restart apps and store them in it's memory, so that they're quick to start up when you need then. Killing them is fighting a losing battle, as you've found, because android is designed to restart them.

But don't worry, whilst those apps are stored in RAM they aren't actually active; they don't drain any more power than if they wren't running. What does drain power however, is the startup of each app every time you kill it. If you stop killing them you should (in theory) see improved battery life.

If you do see improvement when you kill an app however, then it's more likely the app isn't sleeping in the background as it should be.
Click to expand...

Is that the same on 2.1? I have advanced task manager and I have it set to auto end apps every half hour. I just disabled the auto end feature for now to test out how long my battery will last then. I have it set to only use 2g networks as well for extra battery saving since in my bedroom it bounces between 3g and edge often.
 
It's meant to be the same, yeah, although I think 2.2 does a better job of it.

I always used an app called Autokiller that stopped android caching so many apps when using 2.1, which seemed to stop it ever getting laggy. But with 2.2, it seems to handle everything on it's own just fine.

That was my experience with my phone anyway.
 
So, then what about battery savers? Most seem to have app killers in them. Since Froyo and app killer don't mix, what is a good battery saver?
 
My wife and i were in a Verizon store today getting her dumbphone replaced, and i overheard a young store rep tell someone that they MUST use Advanced Task Killer on their Moto Droid. They said that the phone will just not run well without it. The guy said his phone was slow, and laggy, and just did weird things, and every time he looked he had a bunch of stuff running all the time.
Fortunately, i was able to catch the owner on his way out of the store and set him straight. I did tell the rep about Froyo and ATK, so maybe she won't be messing up anyone else's phones!
 
VZW must train their people to support ATK, every person at Verizon i have talked to has told me its a must have. my father is on the phone with technical support at least once a week and they all tell him the same. i finally convinced him to give it a week without it and his X runs way better. i wonder why VZW is unanimously supporting the task killer when it is such a fail.

that said, i use task switcher, with the ability to close active apps, i just like the convenience of switching back and forth, but it give the option to close active apps which are really the power stealers.
 
tinynipples said:
VZW must train their people to support ATK, every person at Verizon i have talked to has told me its a must have. my father is on the phone with technical support at least once a week and they all tell him the same. i finally convinced him to give it a week without it and his X runs way better. i wonder why VZW is unanimously supporting the task killer when it is such a fail.

that said, i use task switcher, with the ability to close active apps, i just like the convenience of switching back and forth, but it give the option to close active apps which are really the power stealers.
Click to expand...

It's probably not that they trian their people to say that, but that they don't train them at all. I have had friends work at various VZW (from sales to QC) and aside from some extremly basic training, they are pretty much thrown out into the wild.
 
Worse - Sprint used to have "use ATK" slathered all over their support site - first thing the store reps told me when I got my Moment was use that junk.
 
I am still running 2.1 on my Fascinate, still waiting on the 2.2 upgrade. I got rid of ATK for a month and didn't notice much of a difference either way. Think it is mostly a mental thing.
 
I did see one on the market called Advanced task killer froyo. It only seems to show certain apps that are running in the background.
 
Hmm. We must have gotten our phones before they started to really push ATK. That was back in March I believe.
 
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