Help Sensation XE (stock) Task killer/running

[MrMister]

Hi

I've just got a Sensation XE, my first Android phone. I've found the task killer, and been told to routinely kill all tasks to help battery life - is this correct?

Also I've just been using the stock HTC task killer, but someone said, use a Market app as HTC's Task killer doesn't kill all apps in background - is this right? and if so, what is HTC hiding in its task killer. Are they not essential then?

Also do you have to do this often, kill tasks. I'm coming from iOS, and they paused stuff in the background and not use battery life

cheers

 

[Cornflake]

Executive summary: leave the OS to look after itself and things will work out just fine. You do not have to run around killing things.
It breaks down to this (quoted from the thread mentioned below):

Android has 4 types of (sub)programs:

• Activities - they are the visual part of application. If you click on icon, you start an activity. These are not the things you complain about, yet take up most of the application run time and battery usage. Activities run only when you use the app itself.
• Services - these are the background parts of the application, but these don't have to run 24/7, just when needed. Of course if you have a web server or music player service, then it has to run all the time. But things like sync service is usually triggerd by the Android OS itself at specified time, until that moment there is nothing using CPU cycles and nothing using battery.
• Broadcast receivers - the best description is in the documentation - "A broadcast receiver is a component that does nothing but receive and react to broadcast announcements". Does nothing, except when called by broadcat announcement. So most time does nothing, use no CPU cycles and no battery.
• Content providers - sort of "database access" component. Again, unless someone requires the data (usually the Activity), it uses CPU and no battery.

This is in essence what's stated here on the Android Developers site: Application Fundamentals | Android Developers

This goes into some detail (largely because of a particular poster ): http://androidforums.com/android-lounge/200760-how-stop-autloading-apps.html

 

[MrMister]

Ok thanks for that, I'm new to Android. It's just someone in another forum
Had said get a different task killer and shows up mOre thing that use up battery power.

With my XE having an in built task killer, and easily available, I seem to think its there to be used, at least for the apps that it displays, eg music app, people app, games etc.

I suppose the in built one is doing its job then and only showing me what's ok to "kill" is this correct? and so I'm ok to keep going like this?

Cheers

 

[Cornflake]

Well, that's the thing: much of what gets listed isn't actually active, running and consuming power: they're "parked", waiting to be kicked into life by something else. Others might be active only in very short bursts.
A task killer would simply show you all the tasks you're able to control, including some system-related ones. They're shown because they're tasks, not because it's Ok to kill them - it might not be Ok!

As per that list I posted, the real battery killers are the obvious ones: activities, and they tend to be rather obvious because an icon gets poked to start them!
But of course these things also have a means of exiting them - at which point they're killed anyway.

I'd regard the task killer as a last resort "big hammer", only used where for whatever reason (buggy, normal exit failed for some reason) something needs to be killed by hand. Apart from that, it's also quite easy to cause things to crash unless you're absolutely sure about what it is and why you're killing it. "Freeing up memory" does not count! That isn't how things work under Linux.
Also a task killer just provides a form of manual control over what the OS is doing anyway: it manages the tasks; not the task killer. That's just a pretty window into the OS internals.

Otherwise it's simply not required, and there's really no reason at all to get a different one.