Root How to properly kill tasks and save battery?

[Vin Cecil]

I have been using advanced task killer app for a while now, and it seems like when its installed it draina more battery, but at the same time wouldn't having 15 diff apps kill more batery?

Also most apps only close for about a minute before starting back up. A few examples are video player, play store, google maps, and so many others just won't stay closed.

Question is, whats the best way to save batery by killing tasks

 

[sammyz]

I have been using advanced task killer app for a while now, and it seems like when its installed it draina more battery, but at the same time wouldn't having 15 diff apps kill more batery?

Also most apps only close for about a minute before starting back up. A few examples are video player, play store, google maps, and so many others just won't stay closed.

Question is, whats the best way to save batery by killing tasks

Let android kill the tasks.....android has it's own task killer and task killer apps are more of a problem than helpful for any android 2.2 or above.

When android kills an app, it kills it like how it's supposed to, when an app kills an app, it just restarts it.

This image is from this article here

 

[Rxpert83]

Yes, don't even look at what apps are running.

Just go on with your day and let android handle it.

Using a task killer does the opposite of what you're trying to accomplish. You already know this to be true by your decrease in battery life.


Having an app open in memory in the background doesn't use battery

 

[Vin Cecil]

Let android kill the tasks.....android has it's own task killer and task killer apps are more of a problem than helpful for any android 2.2 or above.

When android kills an app, it kills it like how it's supposed to, when an app kills an app, it just restarts it.

This image is from this article here

The diagram explained it perfect, thanks man. So when my task killer app kills something, it just calls right back to the on module. Correct?

If so how do I kill a task that runs for hours? Force stop it?

Also some things I noticed need to be on like gmail for constant sync

 

[sammyz]

The diagram explained it perfect, thanks man. So when my task killer app kills something, it just calls right back to the on module. Correct?

If so how do I kill a task that runs for hours? Force stop it?

Also some things I noticed need to be on like gmail for constant sync

You don't kill any tasks. You don't need to. Android does it beautifully. And processes that are always running usually take up very little RAM usage
i.e:
Talk -always running, very little RAM used, never shut off
Contact Sync -running usually once a day---this is from a google service that is always running and cannot be "shut off"
Gmail Sync -usually every 30 minutes---this is from a google service that is always running and cannot be "shut off"
Pandora- runs when told to, stays open until you don't use it for around 30 minutes or if the RAM needs to be used by another app, it will be closed then.
Browser -stays open until RAM needs to be used by another app
Tapatalk -starts on boot, stays open, will open itself automatically.

I'm not gonna list every app....what app do you want closed always?

Better description of how RAM works on a phone (taken from here: http://www.androidcentral.com/ram-what-it-how-its-used-and-why-you-shouldnt-care ):

Unused RAM is wasted RAM.

Android, like Mac OS and Ubuntu, wants to use all the RAM it can, because that's how it was designed to work. There are settings (in Android we call them "minfree" settings) to tell the system how much RAM to leave free and available, but the rest is designed to fill up as fast as possible and stay that way.

You're probably thinking "What's it filling up with?" That's a great question. After the system, graphics, radios, and any other tweaks to RAM are done loading, the rest is there to load apps into memory, right up to the point where the OS says to stop. Load the app as it's being used, and keep it there for the next time until it needs flushed to free space for something else. The more you use the system, the better it gets at keeping the right things loaded and ready to go. Think about how you use your phone -- you might have 100 apps installed, but there are a few you always are opening and using. Eventually, most of those apps will be stored in your RAM, simply because you're always opening them and loading them into the RAM if they weren't already there -- and "erasing" other apps that were there first. Loading an app from your storage takes longer, is harder on the battery, and overall worse than loading it from it's cached position in RAM.

Consider this -- Jerry did/said/thought something that made his wife mad (yes, she can read my thoughts), so he bought flowers from the 7-Eleven and wants to make a mix CD of her favorite Rod Stewart songs to give to her and get his ass out of the doghouse. It could happen. Consider which is more efficient:

Burn 20 songs to a CD, give to wife, and smile while she plays it.
Burn one song to a CD, let her listen, then erase it and burn the next song.
That's what your phone (or tablet) has to consider. Loading Google Talk to RAM once, and having it there to open almost instantly is far better than loading it each and every time you want to use it. So why kill it off? It's not like you'll never use it again, and nothing else is going to use that RAM while it's sitting empty -- at that point, it's wasted space. You will also use a lot more battery power re-opening Talk every time you get a message than you will by having the zeros held as ones on your RAM. The folks who built Android really did know what they were doing when it comes to memory management. After the parameters are set, and the amount the OS can use to "swap" for it's normal operations, the rest is simply wasted if we're not using it. What is cached in RAM is just sitting there, not using any CPU cycles, but ready to get pushed to the front and appear on the screen as fast as it can, and not use the extra battery needed to start it up from disk again.

 

[fieryfennix]

Ok, I get what is being said here, but having been a slave to Windows OS for years, I have to pose the question the way I've always understood it. When unused programs are being held in RAM (the biggest pain in my arse being Google Play Store), it uses up RAM, decreasing the available RAM for other things that I may actually want to use. I do not use Play store very often, perhaps once a week. But it is always open, held in RAM, decreasing available RAM as previously stated, despite my best efforts using the Autostarts app to prevent automatic engaging. So I want to play a game. Now the game I want to play is choppy because the available RAM is low. I kill all running apps, and the damned Play store, increasing available RAM. Now the game runs much smoother. Am I missing something? I fully understand that this is Android OS, not Windows. But in this common scenario it works out just the same.

 

[t3084]

if you are having issues with ram being release then i would assume it's a badly written program. The Flow chart you see above, when a program is suspended it does hold ram yes, but only if it is not needed by any other programs. Some apps have broadcast receivers, some have intents that can be used by other apps, some apps are part of Google Services, this list can go on.

I use Go Launcher EX, which has an option in the app drawer to kill apps, you can set certain apps to never be killed, though the only time I ever use it is really never. Having an excess of ram won't make it run any faster considering the design of android process management. The only time i have ever noticed that killing apps in order to get a boost in performance was on android devices with less ram and slower cpu's than we have.