How do you actually REALLY close out a program/widget/app...?

[Caddyman]

im tired of debating this, i will add something new

dxtop has a second drawer like the app drawer. it shows all recent, running, and background processes. if you long press one you can kill it from the drawer, no app needed, pretty sweet.

see attached

 

[GolfnDroid]

Some apps you can close using back arrow and will not continue to run like:

Market
Moto Torch
Facebook (native)
soundboards and most games etc...

Some apps you can close using the MENU button (button next to arrow four lines stacked on each other for my noobs)

Pandora= MENU--> QUIT

Dolphin Browser= MENU-->EXIT(CLEAR CACHE AND EXIT)

TuneWiki=MENU--> QUIT


Some apps like Handcent will continue running after you hit back arrow and you can turn it off by going into SETTINGS-APPLICATIONS-RUNNING SERVICES-TOUCH TO STOP though this method has been debated on whether this does more harm than good but cannot be any worse than Task Killer.

EDIT= I USE A DROID

 

[L0stS0ul]

if we don't need a task killer why then did they include one in Android 2.0?

I've argued for some time that the auto-reap that android does is set far to low for our phones. 16mb of memory is way to small. It should start auto-reaping between 25-30 IMO. It's also not directly killing apps as I've said previously. It triggers an event in each idle process to free up memory which the developer needs to implement. Here's the actual function.

Activity | Android Developers)

public void onLowMemory ()

Since: API Level 1
This is called when the overall system is running low on memory, and would like actively running process to try to tighten their belt. While the exact point at which this will be called is not defined, generally it will happen around the time all background process have been killed, that is before reaching the point of killing processes hosting service and foreground UI that we would like to avoid killing.
Applications that want to be nice can implement this method to release any caches or other unnecessary resources they may be holding on to. The system will perform a gc for you after returning from this method.

Actually the worst thing on the system is a memory leak in one of the system processes. I think that's the biggest cause of lag on my phone.

 

[Frisco]

if we don't need a task killer why then did they include one in Android 2.0?

There are many stock apps in Eris that are not needed by all Eris users.