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How Valuable are task Killers? Do we need them?

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Okay-66

Newbie
With an Android phone, "task killers" are both very valuable and absolutely needed. With android OS, so many apps keep running behing the sceens to completely drain your battery and cripple your ram. The question is, what can we do about this and what is the most effetive/efficint application to use manage this 'evil'.

I am not a geek. However, I am confused but fascinated with by reading the many forums with people for and against task killers. For that impartial indiviual out there, i need your dispassionate and helpful perspective.

The question then is, cant I find any effective application to choke off and automatically manage the plethora of apps running in the background of my Android phone? I am using the Samsung captivate. I have been looking for a "best-in-class" download to help with manging my tasks to save on background data use and battery life. Can someone recommend the best task killer out there which will not mess up my Captivate?

I have read what folks are saying in other forums and they cautioned against using task killers. But, without this, backgroup apps soak up your memory and slows down one's Captivate.

Thanks.
 
I guess the first question needs to be who says "task killers" are both very valuable and absolutely needed?

The fact is they are NOT and remember you are not a geek
 
With an Android phone, "task killers" are both very valuable and absolutely needed.
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Completely wrong.

With android OS, so many apps keep running behing the sceens to completely drain your battery and cripple your ram.
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Nope, they arent running, they are just cached, not using any battery. and if the OS needs more ram, it will close cached apps as needed.

apps running in the background of my Android phone?
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cached, not running.

Can someone recommend the best task killer out there which will not mess up my Captivate?
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ANY task killer will mess up the phone. It makes it become unstable, as thats NOT the way the OS is designed to work. When it sees that you have killed all the apps, it freaks out, and tries to reload every app again, wasting MORE battery than if you would have just left it alone.

But, without this, backgroup apps soak up your memory and slows down one's Captivate.
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They are not running, just cached. yes, they do fill the memory, but thats how android works. The way Windows works, you could have 8 gigs of ram, but it will never be full. There is no sense in having all that ram empty. Thats why android fills it up, to load apps much quicker, and if it needs the extra memory, it instantly closes apps that are not needed.
 
sitlet said:
Completely wrong.



Nope, they arent running, they are just cached, not using any battery. and if the OS needs more ram, it will close cached apps as needed.



cached, not running.



ANY task killer will mess up the phone. It makes it become unstable, as thats NOT the way the OS is designed to work. When it sees that you have killed all the apps, it freaks out, and tries to reload every app again, wasting MORE battery than if you would have just left it alone.



They are not running, just cached. yes, they do fill the memory, but thats how android works. The way Windows works, you could have 8 gigs of ram, but it will never be full. There is no sense in having all that ram empty. Thats why android fills it up, to load apps much quicker, and if it needs the extra memory, it instantly closes apps that are not needed.
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Best answer I have seen to this sort of question. Sums up everything really well.
 
I know most people are against task killers on here however my phone runs much better and I get significantly better battery life using them.
 
Stealthman said:
I know most people are against task killers on here however my phone runs much better and I get significantly better battery life using them.
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Then you most likely are using some very poorly coded apps

You do understand the task killer itself needs to constantly check for apps you are asking it to kill.
 
sitlet said:
ANY task killer will mess up the phone. It makes it become unstable, as thats NOT the way the OS is designed to work. When it sees that you have killed all the apps, it freaks out, and tries to reload every app again, wasting MORE battery than if you would have just left it alone.
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UNTRUE!!!


NO Task Killer on its own is set up to auto-kill tasks and auto-killing tasks is the thing that gets you in trouble, but NO task-killer comes preconfigured to auto-kill, only the USER can set it up to do so.

If you set it up to auto-kill it will mess things up (I assume you have not thought about excluding the tasks that NEED to be running).

If you just have a task-killer and never set it up to auto-kill tasks NOTHING will go wrong!!!

Please stop the stupid thing with task killers being evil. as they are not evil, only user who set them up to auto-kill are aware of the effects it may bring.

Who is at guilt here then? Task killer that was installed and only the USER set it up to do the wrong thing, it never does that on its own.

My 2cents.
 
No such problems with Iphone... Hummm kinda like Windows crap vs Macs through the years......Guess MAC's were and are the best!
 
I used ATK the second I got my phone, mainly because the sprint guy installed it and said it was required. After personal research and testing, my phone lasts longer without a task killer because its not constantly checking for apps.

Just because apps are open does not mean that they are using battery or memory necessarily. Some apps you close are going to open immediately after you close them causing more battery drain.

I do notice that some people are fine with them, but I learned my lesson. Most people that use task killers do not understand how the Android OS works and I would advise them to read up on it to ease their minds.
 
I have this program called task manager on my droid 2 global that it will not let me uninstall...I'm guessing I should just turn off the automatic settings?
 
Stealthman said:
ummm, no
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Lots of ATK users (who set their ATK to "auto" kill on a schedule) claim to have better battery life. That's likely because they are killing AT LEAST ONE bad app along with the other innocent ones. Instead of taking the time to find out the bad app and uninstalling it they kill everything.

While this may increase battery life (and it should if the app is constantly keeping a wake lock or using data) -- there are just insidious problems later on that the user won't be able to trace to anything.

At some point that auto-kill is going to corrupt something, but who knows what that something is. And the user who was ATK'ing like it was going out of style is going to blame the phone instead of the ATK.

I'll bet that a lot of folks who suffer mysterious problems on their phone have ATK set to auto-kill. And they will never ever admit that the ATK messed up their phone.
 
Every droid device I have had didn't need a task killer. If I ever had a battery issue, it was always due to a rogue app. Task killers are just so unproductive. Kill tasks, tasks restart, kill task... Yeah that's not eating your battery at all.
 
Okay then, I'm using Task Killer so I should uninstall and stop using it. I'm better without it right? Looks like there's more anti task killer than pro task killer.
 
I work in a Sprint store, and I have personally seen both sides. I use ATK, but no auto-kill. And I only use it when the phone seems a little slower than usual, and then it seems to pick right back up. When people complain about battery life to me, it's usually because they use the phone to surf the internet all day with the brightness cranked up all the way, not because of the apps being cached in the background.
 
In my experience I found that using a task killer provided no advantage in performance or battery life compared to just leaving it alone and letting Android manage itself. The only thing it did do was make me paranoid about what was going on in the background.
 
chris100575 said:
make me paranoid about what was going on in the background.
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Exactly my reaction! I only use Watchdog Lite, doesn't kill anything, just alerts for a runaway app...which rarely happens.

One question, though...and for some reason it annoys the hell out of me - having never used moxier mail why would it show up in running apps? Esp. with the stat of 10.7M CPU31s? Seems awfully high for an app that's never been used.
 
see Im glad im reading this thread, cuz im gonna go uninstall ATK now!

I DL'd it because the first thing I did with my new MT4G was look up the "Top 10 best Android Apps" lists...and almost every single one included ATK...
(First time Android user, so dont kill me please)

What do you guys say about that?
 
Okay-66 said:
With an Android phone, "task killers" are both very valuable and absolutely needed. With android OS, so many apps keep running behing the sceens to completely drain your battery and cripple your ram.
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Not this dead horse again. I didn't think there was anything left to beat... :rolleyes:

Colchicine said:
Placebo
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It's more flawed assumption from observation. The flawed assumption being "my device runs better with a task killer" where it should be "my phone runs worse with these particular misbehaving apps". It's like taking over-the-counter medication to address symptoms and assuming that you're cured because the symptoms disappeared while the medication kicked in. The symptoms have been addressed (temporarily) but the actual problem persists.


Milo5 said:
I DL'd it because the first thing I did with my new MT4G was look up the "Top 10 best Android Apps" lists...and almost every single one included ATK...
(First time Android user, so dont kill me please)

What do you guys say about that?
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Popular opinion != fact. Nor does it replace actual knowledge of the OS. Try reading up on how Android multitasks and you'll see why the OP is misinformed.

It's the wild spread of such misinformation that is causing the task killer backlash that we're all seeing everywhere. Task killers aren't evil. They certainly have their use. However, they're also easily misused and can actually negatively affect battery life if set to autokill.
 
Milo5 said:
see Im glad im reading this thread, cuz im gonna go uninstall ATK now!

I DL'd it because the first thing I did with my new MT4G was look up the "Top 10 best Android Apps" lists...and almost every single one included ATK...
(First time Android user, so dont kill me please)

What do you guys say about that?
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I think that's a good idea to uninstall ATK.

But you *do* *sometimes* need a task killer, just one *you* control manually to kill *specific* apps. ATK and most task killers usually don't give you the information you need to kill the *right* app.

So, install Watchdog Lite from the Market (it's free). It will alert you to apps that are using too many CPU cycles (which is what kills battery life) not what's cached in memory (that's what most TKs tell you, this not the information you need to make a *kill* decision).

*AND* just because Watchdog alerts you, doesn't mean you actually have to kill the app...I've had a few Music Player and streaming apps that sometimes rev too high, but then go back to normal. So you can use your judgement on whether to kill the app based on what you expect it to do. For example, Angry Birds might trigger the alert, but since you're playing, it's ok that it's revving high. But if you're done playing and Watchdog alerts you, THEN you may want to kill it.

For TKs, don't let the TK make the judgment for you. Make the judgment yourself and your phone will thank you :)
 
I the time it takes to identify and kill the runaway app you can probably just reboot the phone
 
MarkHirt said:
I the time it takes to identify and kill the runaway app you can probably just reboot the phone
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That may stop a process if it goes awry, but if the app is truly the problem this solution will get old very fast if you have to do this every time that app is used. It's better to solve the problem than work around it.
 
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