Task killer apps " THE TRUTH"

[BlueIce5249]

I've read all the articles and stuff and I'm still not sold. I decided this afternoon to uninstall ATK from my phone and there seems to be no difference really. In fact, I seem to have lost 20+% of my batter within a few hours. I'm not sayin it's from ATK but I still have my doubts. I'll give it a few days though and see how it goes though.

 

[dodger55fan]

I really have no clue about what whether or not having ATK installed does anything, but what I personally do is have all the automatic settings disabled, and kill ATK every time I open it.

Also, I hardly use ATK, I only ever use it when I notice lag on my homescreen or in an app, and after closing every app that does not have a widget (and that I am not currently running) and then having ATK kill itself, it has ALWAYS fixed the lag ... so there's reallly no reason in my opinion not to have it.

 

[Scythe]

A task killer should only be used if a task is misbehaving.

Anyway, I could rehash it all but I'll just link you to the topic I started on a different forum: Task Killers/Multi-Tasking/etc on Android (Continuation from iPhone Thread) - Android Forums

 

[BlueIce5249]

I gotta call BS on this one. My phone has been pretty much sitting since 10 am. I've made a few texts and about 40 min. worth of calls and my battery is down to 15%!! It's running better, but the battery life has just been horrible the past 2 days!! There are no apps eating the batter either, I've checked!

 

[publicanimal]

I personally tested not using Task Killer vs. using a Task Killer regularly on my Droid, and variations in between, and in my experience I found the truth to be somewhere in the middle on this issue.

After getting my Droid one of the first apps I got for it was Taskiller. As soon as the developer released a home screen widget to due a one-tap kill of all the running apps not in the ignore list, I used it constantly for months. In that time I NEVER experienced any lag on the phone at all. It was zippy as could be and along with regularly killing tasks, turning the display down to the lowest level, and trying to keep the screen off as much as possible, I averaged about a day and a half of battery life. I could easily get through the day without having to worry about depleting my charge.

After being in a discussion on this forum about task killers, I went ahead and uninstalled Taskiller. Within the very first hour, I began noticing lag on the phone I had never experience before, it was just a few seconds here and there, not anything that would make you want to curse the phone for being slow. It was very intermittent however, and generally it was not something I would experience.

All of a sudden I could barely make it through the day without worrying about my battery running out of charge. I found that if I had fully charged the Droid in the evening and unplugged it before going to bed, by evening the next day my charge was dangerously low. To be fair I did stream over Pandora while driving around that day, mostly with the screen off but it could have been a battery extensive activity.

So I re-installed Taskiller, but only to kill completely non-essential tasks, I would leave running the frustratingly large number of core processes that would re-boot themselves anyway. When done occasionally, maybe once a day, this seemed to keep any lag at bay even though I was still using a lot more memory than I would have been when I was constantly killing almost all of my tasks on a regular basis. Battery life seemed a little better, though honestly not as good as it was when I was constantly killing tasks.

I've found this middle-of-the-road, more conservative approach to killing tasks to be beneficial to my phone's performance, though I would also not hesitate to agree that you certainly don't NEED a Task Killer app. At the same time, it isn't true that processes running in the background aren't using any of the system's memory, that's a complete and total fallacy. The Linux memory management system is very impressive, but the presence of lag at rare times was enough for me to want to occasionally employ a Task Killer.

What really bothers me is that without rooting there isn't any way to keep certain apps like Corporate Calendar and Amazon mp3 Store from booting constantly. I would like to uninstall these apps as I'd never use them but do I have that option? No. If you could keep a few of these core processes from launching it just seems to follow that your performance would be just THAT much better.

 

[King_Bean]

I am a fan and user of ATK and don't buy, never did buy, that it causes any issues, damage, performance loss.

And NOT having a task killer causes no issues, damage, or performance loss. I haven't had a task killer since January and I have not had ONE instance where I felt like I needed one. My phone is bug free and I've rooted and flashed tons of roms with zero complications. Just as long as I turn down my display brightness, my battery life is normal (and maybe even above normal) and my phone has zero lag. I CONSTANTLY see threads of folks complaining about bugs on this forum but my Droid runs as smooth as butter.

 

[jeffe65]

I noticed something said in one of the above links in this thread, and that is that an app in memory does NOT necessarily use battery power; whereas an app that is actively using CPU cycles will. The android OS knows the difference; you may have 20 or 30 apps in memory, but if they're idle, they're not using battery power, and the OS will bump anything that's idle if it needs the resources. What's using battery power is the screen you're reading it on.

I have an app called Quick System Info, and it will display what's in memory and what's actively running. When the phone is idle, the only thing running is QSI; when I started one of my reminder apps, I went back and now two were using CPU, as I'd expect.

I was using ATK, but all it did was clear apps from memory, and it did prevent some from starting (which you can already do; ATK may be more convenient), but regarding what's using resources, go to processes that are typically using them: GPS, WiFi, screen brightness, etc., and turn them off or turn brightness down. They'll restart the minute you open a program that needs to use those resources. There's a free app called Quick Settings that lets you do most of your settings on one screen.

As mentioned, weather apps are notorious for using battery life, mainly because they're constantly updating their information - Same with news channels and things like that. Streaming radio is another biggie; if you're going to do that, either plan on draining your battery fast, or plug it in when doing it. I've noticed that running music that's already downloaded doesn't do it as fast.

Anyway, sorry for the long post, hope this helps...

 

[Krugger]

so I read everything and noticed there are several points people are making then seem to be arguing about even though person A says something person B is using a different point to disprove person A.

What I mean simply is when someone says "I am using (any task killer) I have it set to kill itself while killing background apps" someone will come and say something like "but have (task killer) running can slow the phone down and drain battery."

When we are talking about task killers there are really three states the phone can be in regarding them.
1. No task killer
2. Task killer that moniters the phone at all times
3. Task killer that only runs and kills apps when you chose.

I have seen plenty of people state what happens and what they believe in regards to the first two. However what about number 3? What is the down side to having an app such as ATK (when you only run it when killing background apps and have it kill itself in the process). Battery life and speed should not be affected due to the fact that there is no app being run. And when you decide to kill multi apps at once you meerly need to click twice and you can close it all in one shot(which due to the fact that you can only shut down one at a time with the built-in task manager you take less time and use less of the phones battery supplying it to the display[not much of a sliver of its life but some none the less]). What are your thoughts on this?

actually with the ATK widget you only need to click once now!

 

[appleaj]

So making a quick read through, I didn't seem to find the answer to this.

Why is just having ATK bad if you only start it to kill third-party or unnecessary apps (like calculator) to clear up memory? Because it by default kills itself as well, then I don't see how it's affecting anything if it's no longer running. . . I bring this up because I don't really care for a bunch of unnecessary apps just sitting there in the background if I have no use for them.

 

[nstallion]

So making a quick read through, I didn't seem to find the answer to this.

Why is just having ATK bad if you only start it to kill third-party or unnecessary apps (like calculator) to clear up memory? Because it by default kills itself as well, then I don't see how it's affecting anything if it's no longer running. . . I bring this up because I don't really care for a bunch of unnecessary apps just sitting there in the background if I have no use for them.

If you aren't using it, it's not taking CPU cycles. If the phone needs the RAM, it will take the calculator out of RAM.

Considering you have an HTC Incredible, you are going to have a hard time filling up the RAM. You are wasting more RAM and processing cycles having the task killer up.

 

[elvis_marmaduke]

Awesome! Thanks for this post, helped alot!

 

[crazymonkey3]

i make sure that the advanced app killer is also killed when I use this app... which is often.

I am very happy with the speed and battery life... even after I install this app. I did not notice a difference. maybe thats becaue I kill when I use it.

I do the same! I love the app. My Hero was running super slow and someone introduced me to this app. It's super easy to launch. I have it on my right side menu. Just about anytime I launch memory hogging/battery draining apps (like the weather channel etc) I immediately launch ATK and kill those hog apps. I also kill ATK. I leave my needed apps running, like gmail, twidroid, calendar, etc. I like that you can check and uncheck apps to kill and it remembers which one's you keep selected next time you launch the app.


I dunno - I REALLY like ATK!

 

[dallows]

I'm bumping this thread. I didn't have to time to read every post. But it's all very interesting. As of now I uninstalled my task killer apps. Just to see what happens.

I can't help but think maybe some people are using the program incorrectly? Like setting it to auto-kill and stuff like that.

I only ever entered the program to kill apps that were not on my exclude list (you can exclude things you know so they will not be ended). I also ended the task killer app at the same time.

I never noticed ANY issued with my phone while using it. None what so ever. Then again I use it a little differently. Like I don't have my emails sync, I do that manually. Though again you could just exclude the gmail app and I'm sure it would be fine.

I might be leaning towards more of a user error type problem than the actual app.

Also, which task manager app is everyone talking about? Not the top one, the one that is just referred to as "task manager." There's like 100 on the market. Thanks.

 

[johnlgalt]

Advanced Task Manager and Task Killer are the 2 main ones most people use.

 

[slackfumasta]

Using ATK dramatically improves my battery life. I attribute it to poorly written apps that use CPU cycles even if they are idle (I had a sound board that was doing exactly this).

I would guess that if every Android app developer wrote apps absolutely perfectly the way Google would want them to, ATK and others like it would not be needed, but I can guarantee that is not the case, having been in software for long enough to know how bad some developers are.

 

[AMTrombley0924]

It's only been a few minutes without an ATK and I can see the difference. The lag from opening apps, going back to home, and screen swipe lag is all gone! Stock Droid FTW

 

[oakley1261]

Using a task killer every once and a while to kill specific apps, like maybe maps, or a game, or another program that doesn't close properly is great. But you don't need a program to do that. Android COMES with a task manager built into it. Go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications. You can look at all of the running processes and force close them. People will lose battery life from opening a task killer all the time, and leaving it running in memory. As well as killing default applications in the android OS that will just reload anyway.

Having applications not using any CPU cycles sitting in memory, will take NO more battery power then having free memory. The RAM is _ALWAYS_ powered unless the phone is off.

So if you kill a few apps here and there, that may use cycles, or access features when not in use, sure, you might save a little battery power. Otherwise, you're just wasting CPU cycles and power just because you want to fiddle with killing apps.

Yes, I have tested with, and without task killers. and I get better performance without them. And, with killing a few app's here and there with the built in app manager in Android, I get slight, if not negligible battery/performance saves by killing app's like maps, or left over games and things of that nature.

 

[dallows]

Advanced Task Manager and Task Killer are the 2 main ones most people use.

No not the task killers. The task MANAGER. It's been mentioned but there are too many with that exact name on the market to know which is which.

 

[johnlgalt]

Using ATK dramatically improves my battery life. I attribute it to poorly written apps that use CPU cycles even if they are idle (I had a sound board that was doing exactly this).

I would guess that if every Android app developer wrote apps absolutely perfectly the way Google would want them to, ATK and others like it would not be needed, but I can guarantee that is not the case, having been in software for long enough to know how bad some developers are.

They are not necessarily poorly written - they are written to access online content b/c they are ad supported or else use some other feature.

You really should start paying closer attention to the permissions that your apps are going to require when installing them - you'll find a whole pile of them will eat up battery life b/c, even when idle, they are continuously doing things like connecting to the network to update advertisements, and such things.

It's why I tend to buy apps that I really wanna keep - so I can get rid of the damned ads.

It's only been a few minutes without an ATK and I can see the difference. The lag from opening apps, going back to home, and screen swipe lag is all gone! Stock Droid FTW

Good for you. Now, keep playing and see how things run....

Using a task killer every once and a while to kill specific apps, like maybe maps, or a game, or another program that doesn't close properly is great. But you don't need a program to do that. Android COMES with a task manager built into it. Go to Settings > Applications > Manage Applications. You can look at all of the running processes and force close them. People will lose battery life from opening a task killer all the time, and leaving it running in memory. As well as killing default applications in the android OS that will just reload anyway.

Having applications not using any CPU cycles sitting in memory, will take NO more battery power then having free memory. The RAM is _ALWAYS_ powered unless the phone is off.

So if you kill a few apps here and there, that may use cycles, or access features when not in use, sure, you might save a little battery power. Otherwise, you're just wasting CPU cycles and power just because you want to fiddle with killing apps.

Yes, I have tested with, and without task killers. and I get better performance without them. And, with killing a few app's here and there with the built in app manager in Android, I get slight, if not negligible battery/performance saves by killing app's like maps, or left over games and things of that nature.

Thank you for aptly saying what I was trying to say. If only more people would read this....

No not the task killers. The task MANAGER. It's been mentioned but there are too many with that exact name on the market to know which is which.

Advanced Task Manager is much more than a task killer.

If you can point to a specific instance where task manager itself is used, then we can be more helpful in helping you find what you are looking for. Admittedly, as you yourself have already seen, it is a rather broad category, and you may be looking for something specific, or it could be that the posters don't mention anything specifically because they know there are so many different ones out there that they just use the term generically, letting the individual reader pick which actual app they want to use....

 

[dallows]

I reinstalled the Advanced Task Manager.

I'm sorry but there's just no reason to have the browser app paused/open/running in background, whatever - unless I'm actively using it.

 

[Cbass]

Ok this is my first post to Android Forums

I do not understand the contradictory statements from some of you folks.

Some of you are saying that you don't have to worry about apps running in the background they go dormant and what not. No worries about memory or battery use right linux has that handled. But then if that is the case why would one need to uninstall ATK to improve performance or increase battery life? It is an app like any other correct? So....

 

[nstallion]

Ok this is my first post to Android Forums

I do not understand the contradictory statements from some of you folks.

Some of you are saying that you don't have to worry about apps running in the background they go dormant and what not. No worries about memory or battery use right linux has that handled. But then if that is the case why would one need to uninstall ATK to improve performance or increase battery life? It is an app like any other correct? So....

IF you have ATK set to auto-kill, or you keep killing the apps yourself, and they are ones that Android needs running or that you use frequently, then you are going to be constantly fighting with Android. It will launch an app, ATK will kill it, Android launches it, ATK kills it, etc etc. THAT will take up CPU cycles and drain the battery more.

If you just use it to kill the occasional app or see what's running then it's not a problem.

 

[devast]

I reinstalled the Advanced Task Manager.

I'm sorry but there's just no reason to have the browser app paused/open/running in background, whatever - unless I'm actively using it.

There is. It's called multitasking. Some people here misunderstands the purpose of task killers. If you have a bugous app, thats not sleeping in the background when it should, killing it with a task killer is not the proper way of handling the problem. Find the misbehaving app, uninstall, and report it to the developer. Totally (and automatically) killing off everything consumes more battery, and makes the phone load apps much slower. My phone starts a bazillion apps when i boot it. And i don't care Let me quote and important part:

A common misunderstanding about Android multitasking is the difference between a process and an application. In Android these are not tightly coupled entities: applications may seem present to the user without an actual process currently running the app; multiple applications may share processes, or one application may make use of multiple processes depending on its needs; the process(es) of an application may be kept around by Android even when that application is not actively doing something.
The fact that you can see an application's process "running" does not mean the application is running or doing anything. It may simply be there because Android needed it at some point, and has decided that it would be best to keep it around in case it needs it again. Likewise, you may leave an application for a little bit and return to it from where you left off, and during that time Android may have needed to get rid of the process for other things.

What you should read: Myth: Android devices need task killers | Smartphones - InfoWorld and Android Developers Blog: Multitasking the Android Way and Application Fundamentals | Android Developers

 

[King_Bean]

Scanning this thread, it's clear that some folks are putting waaaaaaaay too much thought into this issue. I'm not concerned with Linux commands, background programs, available memory or the like.

All I know is this: I've run my Droid for about 5 months without a task killer and it runs like a dream (and I've flashed dozens and dozens of ROMs during that time).

 

[dallows]

I'm bumping this thread. I didn't have to time to read every post. But it's all very interesting. As of now I uninstalled my task killer apps. Just to see what happens.

I can't help but think maybe some people are using the program incorrectly? Like setting it to auto-kill and stuff like that.

I only ever entered the program to kill apps that were not on my exclude list (you can exclude things you know so they will not be ended). I also ended the task killer app at the same time.

I never noticed ANY issued with my phone while using it. None what so ever. Then again I use it a little differently. Like I don't have my emails sync, I do that manually. Though again you could just exclude the gmail app and I'm sure it would be fine.

I might be leaning towards more of a user error type problem than the actual app.

There is. It's called multitasking. Some people here misunderstands the purpose of task killers. If you have a bugous app, thats not sleeping in the background when it should, killing it with a task killer is not the proper way of handling the problem. Find the misbehaving app, uninstall, and report it to the developer. Totally (and automatically) killing off everything consumes more battery, and makes the phone load apps much slower. My phone starts a bazillion apps when i boot it. And i don't care Let me quote and important part:

I've gone ahead and quoted myself above for you. I'd like to first thank you for pointing out what multitasking is. If you hadn't, I would be lost.

It's a simple point that you feel the need to contradict with the same crap that's been posted over and over again.

I kill any task that isn't needed to be running. Apps don't load slowly or lag. My battery life is more than sufficient.

How can you argue against such claims? Do you think I'm just oblivious? That I don't know what it's like when a app lags or the phone isn't operating to it's "snappiness?"

Please. Explain.