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How Valuable are task Killers? Do we need them?

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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Perhaps if you're rooted.

My bootup process is about 2 minutes since I'm unrooted.

So killing the bad app is a heck of a lot faster. Plus now I know which app to keep an eye on. If it happens too frequently, I have to decide is this app worth the hassle since it's obviously poorly coded.

Usually I uninstall. I'd rather keep my phone working harmoniously than have to continually kill a bad app.
 
BookLover said:
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.
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I've been using ATK for a while now and my phone runs smoothly and I get significantly better battery life. I have uninstalled it to see what this if the phone ran better without it and it didn't, my battery life was worse.

That is all the proof I need. I can read all day long until I am blue in the face that android doesn't "need" ATK however my real life experience with it says that my phone runs better with it.
 
Stealthman said:
I've been using ATK for a while now and my phone runs smoothly and I get significantly better battery life. I have uninstalled it to see what this if the phone ran better without it and it didn't, my battery life was worse.

That is all the proof I need. I can read all day long until I am blue in the face that android doesn't "need" ATK however my real life experience with it says that my phone runs better with it.
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Instead of running the ATK, which does make it run worse and less battery. Find the app that drains the battery and remove it, problem solved.
 
Stealthman said:
I've been using ATK for a while now and my phone runs smoothly and I get significantly better battery life. I have uninstalled it to see what this if the phone ran better without it and it didn't, my battery life was worse.

That is all the proof I need. I can read all day long until I am blue in the face that android doesn't "need" ATK however my real life experience with it says that my phone runs better with it.
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Actually, your phone doesn't run "best" with it. All the ATK is doing is killing the misbehaving app that makes it run worse. Now, if you have identified the app but it's one you feel you must keep for whatever reason, then in this instance keeping ATK only for that app is a legitimate argument.
 
jtcady said:
Instead of running the ATK, which does make it run worse and less battery. Find the app that drains the battery and remove it, problem solved.
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My phone runs better and gets better battery life using it, not sure if you saw that when I posted it.
 
Stealthman said:
My phone runs better and gets better battery life using it, not sure if you saw that when I posted it.
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You're still not picking up what we're putting down.

YES, OF COURSE your phone will have battery life and run better if YOUR PHONE HAS A BAD APP that ATK is KILLING FOR YOU!

We're saying FIND THE BAD APP, uninstall it, and YOU WILL NOT NEED THE ATK!

Right now your ATK is killing that bad app, but you're attributing better performance to the ATK rather than attributing bad battery/phone performance to a bad app.
 
BookLover said:
You're still not picking up what we're putting down.

YES, OF COURSE your phone will have battery life and run better if YOUR PHONE HAS A BAD APP that ATK is KILLING FOR YOU!

We're saying FIND THE BAD APP, uninstall it, and YOU WILL NOT NEED THE ATK!

Right now your ATK is killing that bad app, but you're attributing better performance to the ATK rather than attributing bad battery/phone performance to a bad app.
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I get what you are saying but it's working good now, why not just keep running it the way it is?
 
Stealthman said:
I get what you are saying but it's working good now, why not just keep running it the way it is?
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Because you're just addressing the symptoms (bad battery life/bad phone performance) not solving the problem (remove problem app, or at the very least *identify* it).

If you break your leg and you're in pain, and you keep taking painkillers, you stop feeling the pain, but your leg is still broken.

We're saying find the broken leg and fix it. Don't just keep popping pills.

I firmly believe everyone SHOULD have a task killer installed. Just DON'T set it to "auto" kill. Use the task killer *manually* to kill specifc bad apps *as needed*, not on a schedule.

ATK doesn't give you the information you need to make a good kill decision. Overactive CPU cycles kill battery and phone performance. Not apps cached in memory.

So if you want to fix the broken leg, install Watchdog Lite (see my signature for link. I'm not affiliated with them. I just think the app is awesome at diagnosing bad apps)... and check out the app or apps that it alerts you to that are running too many CPU cycles. Then you can decide to kill the bad app then and there, or let the app run, or at some point if you'd rather uninstall the app altogether. AND you will know what the bad app is.

Bottom line is *you* should make an informed kill decision, don't let your task killer make it for you.
 
I ran advanced task killer with launcher pro plus the first month I had my evo. Since I removed it my phone has run three times better. It never acts slow or glitchy anymore and my battery life has actually improved.
 
I have a task killer ( i don't remember the name of it but it is a widget that does alot more than kill apps ). i only use it to end a specific program ( usually a game ) that won't exit when i want to. I hit the home button and open my task killer and kill the one app. Using a task in this way does not hurt your phone.
The task killer i bought shows all the programs running in the background and how much power they consume. All the worthless stuff in the background doesn't use any juice. I am also not a " geek " so could one of you elaborate on the running program vs the cache.
Deep down inside i kinda want to be a geek.
Could someone throw me a link to that article that explains how the android os works? thanks
 
What would google do?

Anyone who says task killers are good DOES NOT understand android. Google DO understand android, they did create it after all.

Its difficult to keep repeating oneself about this issue, especially when people come back with the same argument "but my battery life is better", "if i don't close it who will", "my phone slows down"

Listen, android was built with task management in mind, alright, they developed it so the user can just get on with using their phone, and not have to care about process management.

Anyone who says different is WRONG, google says so. But not only do they say it, they also explain why they say so.

Read Me > http://www.droid-den.com/android-guides/android-guide-should-i-use-a-task-killer
 
Thanks for the link. I read it and it makes sense. The task killer i have is the system panel from the article. But when i first bought my droid the first app i bought was a task killer. The guy at verizon told me to get one. I deleted it after about a week ( after reading the forums ).
 
I used ATK for a while NOT set on auto kill, and it did seem to help with performance. Battery wise, I didn't notice a difference, but that may be because I didn't have it set to auto.
 
BookLover said:
You're still not picking up what we're putting down.

YES, OF COURSE your phone will have battery life and run better if YOUR PHONE HAS A BAD APP that ATK is KILLING FOR YOU!

We're saying FIND THE BAD APP, uninstall it, and YOU WILL NOT NEED THE ATK!

Right now your ATK is killing that bad app, but you're attributing better performance to the ATK rather than attributing bad battery/phone performance to a bad app.
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You are still not taking into account those whose phones do not have enough resources to run a lot of apps at the same time and have to kill some of them for the work to work smoothly.

If one has such a problem and the person actually thinks about the way to do it they will exclude all tasks that need to run at all time (widgets, system apps, etc.) and only kill those apps that keep popping up for no reason.
 
I think it's important for everyone here to understand the difference between apps that are strictly cached which uses no battery, and those which actually DO run in the background in which case there will be a difference in battery life. For the most part the Android OS does fine on its own and shouldn't be mucked with, but I can see how if one has opened and closed dozens of apps there would be an aggregate amount of cpu cycles accumulating from 5 or 6 apps which run a process or two every couple of minutes.

****READ THIS******
What IS important when considering battery life is which apps you have set to do various things like synching: facebook account, email/gmail, weather update etc. And of course how bright your display is (this one is ALWAYS at the top of the juice-sucking list if your looking at something longer than 5 minutes). Set all of these things to "manual" and your battery life will improve greatly. ....cross my heart :)
 
Stealthman said:
Final word, I will continue to use my phone as I like but thanks for the tip
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Of course.

Which phone do you have and what OS?

As Szadzik mentioned, it has been documented that phones prior to 2.1 may benefit from a TK because THOSE particular older phones did NOT manage memory well.
 
Stealthman said:
Final word, I will continue to use my phone as I like but thanks for the tip
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I'm a noob to the smartphone arena and when I picked up my optimus s from Best Buy I had several people tell me a task killer was an absolute necessity. After cruising several forums and doing some research I decided against installing a task killer and to let the os do what it was meant to do. Personal preference really. I can see the advantage of having one for rare occasions if you're a developer. For now though I'm going without one.
 
Stealthman said:
I have the X and froyo
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Not needed.

But as you say, it's your phone do what you like with it.

The point we are trying to get across is not that we should force you to do something, but to actually try and get rid of this myth that task killers are essential for android phones.

They are not, in fact they are the opposite.

Once sales reps and friends stop telling new android owners to download a task killer before they even get the phone the world will be a better place, people will have a lot less problems with their phones and can spend more time on those apps that are fun to use.


Once again, your money, your phone, your choice. But that does not make it the right one. People need to know this.
 
I got ATK and only use it when I feel like I have too many programs running at the same time. It's not on auto kill. Should I still uninstall it or I can keep it that way (manual kill)
 
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