Help How many apps is "too many"?

[cbasse]

So, I'm relatively new to the smartphone thing and Android in particular...

Anyhow, I've been having a grand ol' time just downloading any app that looks of interest, whether I truly "need" it or not. Come to discover that I have somewhere around 300 apps installed on my phone. (I'm using a 16gb MicroSD card)

My question is is there a guideline for how many apps is "too many" - specifically, will I notice significant performance/responsiveness issues as I continue to add apps? From time to time I do notice some sluggishness, but on a good day(which is most days) everything seems to run fine...

Maybe more of a curiosity question, but I'm wondering how many most people have and what seems to be the "critical mass" for this phone...

 

[Snowman269]

Once your phone becomes sluggish, and lags. you will have found the limit.

My 1st Android, the G1 would start to bog down at 5-6 apps.
My 2nd phone the MyTouchSlide3G could handle 20-25 apps,
My G2 doesn't slow no matter how many apps, must be in the 100's for capability. Maybe I'll load it until it bogs.

Let us know when yours has had enough.

 

[sremick]

It's not the number of apps, it's the type of apps or how they behave.

Just having a lot of apps on your phone isn't necessarily going to slow your phone down at all. But some apps needlessly auto-run on startup, while other install a background service (which is different) to perform some function or another. A phone with 50 of these apps could feel slower than a phone with 500 apps that play nice and sit idle until launched.

There are various startup cleaners which will let you kill apps that try to auto-start on boot. Unfortunately I've yet to find any app that allows you to manage services, which is a separate list than running apps. So far the only trick I've found is to remember to always go into the running services list after every boot and stop the needless ones I've learned to look for.