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here is why I use a task killer

callmeox said:
First off, you built a wonderful strawman with the "task killers are not pointless" line. I don't recall anyone making that assertion here.

Since you can't control which installed software loads and doesn't load on boot nor can you control the re-spawn time of a process or program, your premise is faulty from the get go.

What it comes down to is this: Do I believe the people who designed and maintain the OS or do I believe a faceless pseudonym on an internet message board? I realize that this is approaching the "appeal to authority" logical fallacy, but that is where we are.
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First, people _are_ stating that apps should not be shut down using a task killer.

Second, as I mentioned, those apps don't restart often. I mentioned sometimes it's once a day but I've also had them stay shut down for days.

Lastly, I mentioned in a perfect world the OS _would_ handle everything perfectly without the need for a task killer. But it simply does not work like this... all of the time. I've read many posts from people who say task killers should not be used. When it's mentioned why they are needed (rough apps, apps that should but don't shut down, apps that hog CPU, etc.) they usually agree.

It seems like we are arguing two different points. You state that the OS manages memory. I agree. But I also think this does not trump using a task killer.
 
tcope said:
First, people _are_ stating that apps should not be shut down using a task killer.
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I think that you're misunderstanding what has been said.

There are probably 3 classes of task killer users:

1) Those who kill everything when you are done using the phone, before you hit the power button. They are either the OCD crowd, former WinMo users or people who listened to VZW support and just don't know better. This is the more harm than good group, but there's no convincing them otherwise.

2) Kill the pre-installed stuff that loads on boot but sits idle unless the user launches the program. There may be items that don't restart, but I would guess that the majority of these do restart over time. They may be helping if they have a poorly coded app, but the tinkering really isn't necessary otherwise.

3) Occasional users (I'm here) who have it as a safety valve in the event that a program goes wonky and needs to be terminated. I can count the number of items that I've killed on three fingers and I got the phone on launch day.

The savvy here are discouraging the #1 and most of the #2 behavior. In an ideal situation, you should never have to use a task killer, but we know that isn't possible so there are the #3's.

It still comes down to using poorly coded apps that don't sleep and I don't recall from the list of misbehaving apps that any of them were pre-loaded on the phone. Choose your market apps wisely. If you find that one doesn't sleep or causes battery drain, use the feedback section in the app market and let the devs know. Even the handiest of apps isn't worth it if it sucks your battery dry.
 
I think everything is wrong. Certain tasks reopen themselves automatically (voice dialer, for instance); these tasks should not be murdered. Other tasks are used repeatedly throughout the day, but do not reopen themselves (sNESoid, perhaps); these task should or should not be murdered depending on how often they're used and how much battery they drain while idling.

The tasks which should be ghosted are the ones that start up when you turn your phone on and just sit there draining battery, and the tasks that you use once and then won't need again for the rest of the day.

I could be wrong. This is just a theory I'm working on. I'm curring trying to go completely without a task killer and it seems to be going pretty poorly. However, I've been playing games a lot (chrono trigger, street fighter II turbo, and robo defense).
 
re: the negativity that comes with using task killers:

when I use ATK to kill everything, a bunch of processes and programs should start up right? and I'm sure they do. and everyone says that this is wasting battery power...but here is the the thing: I don't ever notice this killing lots of battery...if anything maybe I lose 1%? but I think even less.

on the flip side, accidentally leaving something bad running can easiliy drain you of 10% or more depending how long it sits there

I realize the long term solution is to not install apps that are battery hogs, but even something like a wonky web page or anything internet related that is trying to connect constantly (like a Pandora?) can completely kill you if you leave it alone by accident
 
Personally, I just ATK after boot. It cleans out a lot of the auto startup crap that the programmers like to install. Then, it's only the stuff I'm actually using that gets restarted. Some say "But they all restart", but if I do it again at the end of the day it will only kill half as many processes.
Once in a blue moon, I ATK a program when it acts up.

I think the thing that helped my battery the most is getting my wifi in order. Using Timeriffic, it auto connects to wifi at work and home - both of which have dodgy 3G service.
 
makewayhomer said:
I see, hitting the left arrow button does seem to do that. however, I have to hit that button A LOT...I just went to the cbs fantasy baseball live scoring for 30 seconds, and had to "left arrow" 4 times to completely exit the browser. I would imagine if I am on there for 30/45 minutes or so I would have to hit left arrow so much that it's an unreasonable solution, and just using a task killer is a better solution
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A quick double tap in Dolphin browser will let you exit. Or it might be a triple. I've meant to just go back a few pages...and then exited out. Doh!
 
Quintessence said:
And watch your batter life go down when you need the processors to reopen all the closed programs. Android is linux based, it will only run the apps in the background it needs.
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I'm sorry, this is a ridiculous statement. First off, on a standard linux system (RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, etc) if it launches an app that it needs in the background, it's not an app, it's a service (daemon), that 99.9% doesn't have the ability to come to the foreground. Now, you might interact with it with some secondary gui app that launches in the foreground, but that's very different than what we're dealing with here.

Second, every one of the apps I use on my linux systems (over 75 at work) has the ability to quit. Why? Because that's what you do when you're done with an application, you quit. If you wanted it to be available for later, you wouldn't quit it. Now, that's not to say that some shared library (DLL for you windows fans) might not stay resident in memory for the next guy, but the app definately quits, and it's not at all uncommon that, if it doesn't, you kill -9 the thing.

Finally, I'm not saying that Android wasn't built to support the kind of memory/app swapping and closing mentioned here, but that would be a special feature of Android, not shared by mainstream linux OS', so to say that it does these things because it's based on linux is false. The exact same functionality could have been added if it were Windows, or any other OS.

Doc
 
Apps DO start up (almost immediately) on their own whether I use them or not. The Weather Channel, Skype Mobile (since upgrading to Froyo), Tweetcaster...those three are THE most guilty of just turning themselves on.
 
DroidRocker said:
Apps DO start up (almost immediately) on their own whether I use them or not. The Weather Channel, Skype Mobile (since upgrading to Froyo), Tweetcaster...those three are THE most guilty of just turning themselves on.
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Was it necessary to bring up this thread from 2 months ago?
 
I use the stock battery info which gives me all the information I need throughout the day on what's using my batter. (about phone - Battery use). And of course i use Task Manager and sort by CPU % to see what the hell is going on, and I use ATK just to view some of the apps that are running and I mainly only kill ATK and leave everything else alone now. I used to just hit the widget every 20 minutes and autokill everything with one click, but when i launched ATK again, all the apps were there anyway. It was then that i realized a TK is not really worth it.

Also, anytime i go to a web page, when im done, i always hit menu/home and go back to google because i've seen instances that caused a lot of drain due to an auto-refresh option. believe it or not, yahoo mobile page is set to refresh after a certain amount of time as well, a lot of pages are starting to auto refresh so that mobile devices always have the most up to date entries/news reports/rss feeds...etc.
so i made it a ritual and habit to go to menu/home every time i'm done with my browser. I also click window, and delete all other pages that are running and only leave the default one.

Maybe it's my OCD, but i dont like leaving more than 1 page running unless i need to (i never need to).

If you use ATK to just look, you will notice the apps kill themselves and wont need to kill tasks constantly. I don't see cityID running all the time, i don't see skype running all the time, after a reboot yes, you will see all the apps running, but after some time, the OS will stop those apps and allocate space and memory for what YOU are running.

i agree with the poster that said applying windows knowledge to a linux based OS will get you nowhere, Fast.

PS. I think we should do a poll to guess how many TaskKiller topics/threads have been started in the last 4 months, i'm going to say close to 1,000 Threads. Not responses, I mean threads, as in topic starts. maybe even more than 1,000 is my guess ;)
 
DocTauri said:
I'm sorry, this is a ridiculous statement. First off, on a standard linux system (RHEL, Fedora, Ubuntu, SUSE, etc) if it launches an app that it needs in the background, it's not an app, it's a service (daemon), that 99.9% doesn't have the ability to come to the foreground. Now, you might interact with it with some secondary gui app that launches in the foreground, but that's very different than what we're dealing with here.

Second, every one of the apps I use on my linux systems (over 75 at work) has the ability to quit. Why? Because that's what you do when you're done with an application, you quit. If you wanted it to be available for later, you wouldn't quit it. Now, that's not to say that some shared library (DLL for you windows fans) might not stay resident in memory for the next guy, but the app definately quits, and it's not at all uncommon that, if it doesn't, you kill -9 the thing.

Finally, I'm not saying that Android wasn't built to support the kind of memory/app swapping and closing mentioned here, but that would be a special feature of Android, not shared by mainstream linux OS', so to say that it does these things because it's based on linux is false. The exact same functionality could have been added if it were Windows, or any other OS.

Doc
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Doc i somewhat agree with you in terms of the OS's you mentioned, but I have to disagree when you say that the exact functionality could have been added if it were windows, or any other OS. We did not make up or assume the comparison that these mobile devices are linux based, there is factual data (from the phone manufacturer) that they are linux based. So unless I read you wrong and you're not stating that, it sounds like you're saying that these mobile phones running android are specific to Android and not linux. I partially agree because the phone is using a 2.6 Linux Kernal, that is a fact, and while the OS's you mentioned do have an exit/quit option, even when you quit you still see them in task manager with 0% cpu usage, which is the same thing as you see when you look at your mobile device. I believe, and again, this is just my opinion, that the exit button in the popular linux operating systems are just a better way for the end user to understand that the app is closed/exited...but it's still functioning the same way at it's core.
 
I have never used a task killer and I never manually kill tasks.
My battery lasts 26 hours with above average amount of texting. I also play around with the device doing other things during the day.
 
DGRYAN1977 said:
I have never used a task killer and I never manually kill tasks.
My battery lasts 26 hours with above average amount of texting. I also play around with the device doing other things during the day.
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How long would it last if you _did_ kill rouge tasks? That is the question. Otherwise your statement means very little.
 
tcope said:
How long would it last if you _did_ kill rouge tasks? That is the question. Otherwise your statement means very little.
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But why? What is the difference? Its 26 hours of battery. Why would I ask for more? I charge it every night regardless.
 
For Tcope I am going to download a task killer tonight. I won't charge the phone tomorrow night and I will see if the battery life is better.
 
I had ATK installed, just got rid of it to see if I noticed anything different, but I just only used it to kill problems, mostly when my browser locked up.

But someone answer me this. Why do all those shit programs load up anyway? FM radio, Skype, City ID, Voice Search, Voice dialer etc etc. I never use these programs and do not know for the life of me why they are even started. I can see processes being started that are actually needed to run the phone but Skype???

I bet people would have far less issues if these crap programs were never loaded to begin with. People see these services loaded and just assume it's causing battery drain, especially when they close them and they restart. People start posting about it now you have mass hysteria.
 
DGRYAN1977 said:
For Tcope I am going to download a task killer tonight. I won't charge the phone tomorrow night and I will see if the battery life is better.
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Damn, I was hoping you'd not call me on that. :)

No... be interesting to see what happens. Try it for at least a few days.
 
This may be slightly off topic but what are the best settings to use for ATK?
I just downloaded it and I am trying to configure it.
 
I was a big fan of ATK with 2.1 and no one could talk me out of using it . But 2.2 works so well managing apps....I have stopped using it completely. I have seen no change in battery life since I stopped using it and its a big relief not to "kill" every time I touch the phone.
 
ill never understand how the hell anyone is getting 26 hours on thisbphone. ill get 15 told it says but I dont even get that.
 
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