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Help Task Killers! Must read for new Android Users

Force close apps/services?

  • Yes, I force close apps/services with ____

    Votes: 101 44.9%

  • No.

    Votes: 69 30.7%

  • Sometimes...

    Votes: 55 24.4%
  • Total voters
    225
If your looking for a good task killer but dont need it to kill alot of apps and more so to monitor your cpu,memory,battery usage look into system panel, I find it to be a really nice app and one of few apps out there that have 5 stars. It has a built in installer/uninstaller and will monitor your phone for as long as you want and keep a record of its data for up to 3 weeks.. it really let me look in to how much battery sywpe uses and other random things I have only used it to kill a few heavy tasks more so games then anything.. its just a good app if you want to really know what is going on with your phone I will be monitoring mine for at least another 1 so I get a full 3 days of (whats going on with what) kinda thing.

Ohh and one more thing I do agree there is not much need for killing tasks since these phones will kill a task if the ram is needed on its own.. then agian it is good for apps that will not respond to anything and you need to kill it.. Im still new to all of this but yeah check out system panel if you have not already its good stuff and the UI is really nice you can tell the dev put A LOT of work into it.
 
JFSG said:
What if you have annoying apps like Google Maps which just runs itself when we do not want or need it to?
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The reason this happens has to do with the way Android apps work. Android apps are composed of activities that other apps can "call" and use. any app can call activities that are contained in other apps. If the maps app is running there is likely a reason for it. I am an android app developer and have learned how to use activities from other apps. If I'm writing an app that needs to send files via email, I know that the target phone likely has the gmail app so I don't need to write lots of email code into my app when I can simply use the activities from the gmail app. This keeps the overall size of my app smaller due to having to contain less code.

For example, when a file manager is asked to send a file via email and the user chooses gmail, the file manager simply calls the 'send' activity of the gmail app to complete the task that the user asked the file manager to complete. This will result in seeing the gmail app as running in the background even though the user didn't actively launch the gmail app.

Activities and connections keep apps from growing too large. If a file manager had to ship containing every ounce of code to perform all of its features, that file manager app would likely be so large that no one would want to install it. Apps can call activites from other apps instead of having to ship with all of the code to perform the same tasks, alleviating tons of redundant code.

Many android users don't understand how the system works and then complain that some apps 'run by themselves' when the fact of the matter is a user indirectly launched the running app in order to complete a task. If a task isn't completed and the user kills the running app, it will just have to reload and start its task all over from scratch.

The best thing to do is let the system take care of itself, android can do this quite well if the user simply allows android to do what it does best :)
 
I was having progressively worse problems watching youtube videos on my EVO 4G. Eventually they quit playing all together. Normally the guys at the sprint store don't know anything about their phones but this time he told me to get rid of any task killers, and do a full restore on the phone. I uninstalled the advanced task killer app and youtube videos started playing normall......I did not have to restart the phone. Just wanted to share my success story. LostAirplane, St. Louis, MO.
 
BigMamma said:
Why don't you avoid using a Task Killer and just uninstall the misbehaving app? That makes more sense to me.
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well, some apps are worth having and freezing when you dont use em and defrosting in the rare occasion that you do want to use them. The phandroid app is one that ALWAYS runs (on my phone at least) and i just dont see the need to leave it running... there are a couple others that do the same thing, so i just freeze/defrost when necessary :)
 
I used to use Taskpanel, but ever since I read the article about how ever since Froyo Android has managed to run apps more efficiently, I uninstalled. Never been happier! Battery life has also been extended by at least 2 or more hours!!!
 
RiverOfIce said:
You can not have the task killer just randomly kill things. You only need it if you have poor battery life do to misbehaving apps.
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In that situation, it is best to find the misbehaving application that is causing the huge battery drain and uninstall it. Killing the app is only a bandage solution and reason why someone would see an improvement in battery life.
 
youdoofus said:
i do... it runs all the effen time... ticks me off LoL
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The system should 'kill' it if it is unactive for a certain duration or if more CPU is needed. If it's not, that means you have some kind of sync activate? You might want to check that out and see if everyhing is 'un-sync'.
 
ive been going thru the settings in the maps app from time to time from day uhhhhhh.... 3(maybe) of having noticed it LoL which was back in august '10. I dunno how much impact it has on muh battery, cuz i cant compare since i cant get the gawl-darn thing to stay killed for more than ohhhhh 10 seconds lol i kinda threw my hands up on the issue some time ago, as it seemed to be a losing battle. I have checked all sorts of synch options both in the maps app and other apk's that might use location as well. Any other suggestions, ya have for me would be appreciated :)
 
youdoofus said:
ive been going thru the settings in the maps app from time to time from day uhhhhhh.... 3(maybe) of having noticed it LoL which was back in august '10. I dunno how much impact it has on muh battery, cuz i cant compare since i cant get the gawl-darn thing to stay killed for more than ohhhhh 10 seconds lol i kinda threw my hands up on the issue some time ago, as it seemed to be a losing battle. I have checked all sorts of synch options both in the maps app and other apk's that might use location as well. Any other suggestions, ya have for me would be appreciated :)
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Google maps includes a service that other apps can use. In my case this includes OneBusAway, Places, Navigation, etc. If you kill the service and another app needs to use it two seconds later then that service is going to be up and running again. If you kill it again and another app needs it, it's going to be up and running again. Lather, rinse, repeat. This is the way android was designed to work. Allowing one app to use activities in another app keeps the size of 3rd party apps small. Otherwise 3rd party apps would be huge because they would need to include more code to accomplish their task instead of relying on code that is already present in android.

I see two choices here:
1. Refrain from killing google maps, the system is just going to restart the service as soon as it's needed again.
2. Find out which app is the cause of the service being started and uninstall that app.

The likely reason others aren't experiencing the same battery drain as you are is because they aren't running the same apps you are. Many 3rd party apps rely on core apps and that is why some core apps seem to run even though we didn't actually launch them.
 
ardchoille said:
Google maps includes a service that other apps can use. In my case this includes OneBusAway, Places, Navigation, etc. If you kill the service and another app needs to use it two seconds later then that service is going to be up and running again. If you kill it again and another app needs it, it's going to be up and running again. Lather, rinse, repeat. This is the way android was designed to work. Allowing one app to use activities in another app keeps the size of 3rd party apps small. Otherwise 3rd party apps would be huge because they would need to include more code to accomplish their task instead of relying on code that is already present in android.

I see two choices here:
1. Refrain from killing google maps, the system is just going to restart the service as soon as it's needed again.
2. Find out which app is the cause of the service being started and uninstall that app.

The likely reason others aren't experiencing the same battery drain as you are is because they aren't running the same apps you are. Many 3rd party apps rely on core apps and that is why some core apps seem to run even though we didn't actually launch them.
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thats what i was thinking, i just cant seem to find which apps are at fault here. I guess i can freeze certain apps and see when the maps app seems to stop auto-launching. Im not even sure how much its affecting me...
 
youdoofus said:
thats what i was thinking, i just cant seem to find which apps are at fault here. I guess i can freeze certain apps and see when the maps app seems to stop auto-launching. Im not even sure how much its affecting me...
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Easier way: dial *#*#4636#*#* --> battery history --> select gps usage and it will show you all of the apps that used the GPS

You can then check to see which one of these apps use the map
 
Roze said:
Easier way: dial *#*#4636#*#* --> battery history --> select gps usage and it will show you all of the apps that used the GPS

You can then check to see which one of these apps use the map
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when i do that, there isnt a battery history choice :(
 
youdoofus said:
when i do that, there isnt a battery history choice :(
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Oh :/ that really sucks. That's a stock Android feature...thought it was on all Android phones -_-;;;

I guess it's the long way...and checking the apps that has GPS as part of their permissions to see which one is the culprit.
 
jbeard0923 said:
couldn't you accomplish what a task killer does by going to running services and force stop any app you wanted?
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Yes, and that's the right way. Just do it judiciously, not because you just feel like it. Perfectly OK if an app goes south and you want to stop it and try it again before deleting or re-installing, or to see if the bad behavior was a one-time glitch.
 
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