Why you don't need a task killer

[cds0699]

It's def not something to fight about for sure, lets remember that discussing the issue is perfectly fine, lets just keep it civil and not berate/flame other members . Having an open and mature discussion is how people learn.

 

[KingOfGreen]

Im tired of the misinformation, as HankAtrix pointed out. Tons of android new comers, uneduacated user, and ignorant users who refuse to see the light (no helping them) continue to use task killers. I could care less about changing Hanks mind. But id hate for newcomers and users looking for insight to come in here and decide Hank is right and keep using them. Although there is PLENTY of info here.

Id just like it to be obvious than Mr. Hank here cant provide ANY evidence in the form of articles/testimonials from reputable devs that task killers should be used. But thats been shows as ive seen tons of links to articles from google devs and others stating why you DONT need them and none to the contrary.

I think Hank is just stubborn and stuck in his ways, like the Amish i just dont understand how he can ignore all the information in here. But then again, Amish see cars and modern farm equipment and say "yeah thats cool, but id rather break my back on the farm and 10mph on this horse is plenty for me!"

 

[hansschmucker]

Just don't make it personal... I mean, it's a little tool and honestly, it doesn't do a lot of harm... probably makes people feel better about battery life and so on due to the Placebo effect. Yes, restarting the tasks takes a little time and battery life, but it's not like we're talking about 20% battery life. It just seems like a good time to remind people to keep things in perspective.

 

[lunatic59]

....stuck in his ways, like the Amish ... Amish see cars and modern farm equipment and say "yeah thats cool, but id rather break my back on the farm and 10mph on this horse is plenty for me!"

Living in the heart of Amish country, I can tell you that ignorance is not why they reject modern conveniences. You don't have to agree with their choice, but you should admire their convictions.

Of course an Amish man has never claimed that a horse-drawn plow is more productive than a tractor and people should reject John Deere for a Clydesdale.

 

[hansschmucker]

As long as they don't ask me to do as they do, they are free to do as they please

 

[BabyBlues]

Living in the heart of Amish country, I can tell you that ignorance is not why they reject modern conveniences. You don't have to agree with their choice, but you should admire their convictions.

Of course an Amish man has never claimed that a horse-drawn plow is more productive than a tractor and people should reject John Deere for a Clydesdale.

+1 for the comparisons

(ok - back to the yes vs. no vs. unsupported claims.....)

 

[KingOfGreen]

Living in the heart of Amish country, I can tell you that ignorance is not why they reject modern conveniences. You don't have to agree with their choice, but you should admire their convictions.

Never meant Amish=Ignorant just that they see an easier way everywhere and choose otherwise, as Hank sees tons of well backed and reputable info and CHOOSES to believe otherwise. I've always wondered, if Amish can leave and return (so long as they go back to the Amish ways). could someone from the outside decide to go and live Amish??

Of course an Amish man has never claimed that a horse-drawn plow is more productive than a tractor and people should reject John Deere for a Clydesdale.

Back to the topic. what confuses me the most is Hank says his phone "lags" or slows down with sooooo many apps running. when he has an Atrix. my friend has a My Touch 4G and i cant get that thing to lag or slow down if i try! but hey between your eyes and your mouth (fingers in this case) is your brain with ALL of its prejudice and idea about what SHOULD happen. you see what you expect and what you want. not always whats actually there there.

Placebo Effect

i for one used to be in the same boat. as soon as i got my phone my boss and i friend told me I NEEDED to download ATK and blah blah blah. so did. and i set up my ignore list "properly" and i really felt like it made it FASTER.

Then i came on these forums, rooted my phone and after some time here the subject came up. i read the articles and took it off. it took some getting used to. did my phone get "faster" without it? i don't know. but what i do know is it didn't get slower and everything ran smoother and the things i used to kill now loaded faster.

why in the world would these phones keep coming out with more and more RAM.
*<256mb for the for my phone and some other mid-range/older devices and the new phones have 1gb+*
if you are supposed to kill your tasks to keep the memory free?

 

[Stuntman]

I did a bit of research on ATK. From what I have seen, there does not seem to be any endorsement that it will do anything more than just kill a task on your Android phone. It doesn't claim using it will improve battery life or improve performance of your phone. The only thing I can find that suggests any benefit is for people to use it if the phone is sluggish. Even so, it does not claim to remove the sluggishness.

Most of the information is rather old and dated 2009 or 2010. My understanding is that the older versions of Android did not manage tasks and resources as well as the later versions. My Desire Z running Froyo has a built-in way to manage and kill tasks should I need to. I have used it a few times when an app did not behave properly and killing the app/task and then restarting it fixed the issue I was having. With Froyo, I have a way to do it without downloading a third party task manager/killer.

I have seen many testimonials in the users comments claiming that it conserves their battery life. I have also seen testimonials claiming the tasks just reopen after they are killed just like some experts in Android claim would happen. I generally read user comments before downloading apps and I find some comments are more useful than others.

I also tried to find the benefits of Android task killers. Everywhere I looked, the articles I was able to find advises not to use task killers in Android. If there were some benefits to task killers other than simply killing a rogue task, I would expect to have found at least one recent article from an expert that would explain the benefits of task killers. Having found none and only some end user testimonials (which are refuted by other testimonials) I feel that the only real benefit of a task killer is to kill a rogue task (which I have also done myself).

HankAtrix feels that ATK provides him with benefits over and above killing rogue tasks. I am not convinced that I would also realise these similar benefits.

 

[aysiu]

It looks like I need to repeat a couple of themes from this post (from me).

Repetition of falsehoods is not a suitable replacement for logic.

I have never said Android needs a task killer to run or that it is a cure-all (panacea) for Android. But it does do a better job of killing apps than doing it yourself or simply letting Android do it alone.

The assumption you're making is that killing apps on a regular basis is desirable. I just let my apps run. No problems here. No sluggishness. No battery life problems.

this case ATK does a better job of killing tasks than doing it alone or letting Android do it.

You have yet to establish that regularly killing tasks is desirable for anyone but you.

I am arguing that Android will run faster when you have most of the apps closed.

Not really. You're just restating it in the hopes that the people trying to reason with you will just get tired of arguing with you and that you'll "win" just by wearing people out instead of debating using reason, logic, and reputable sources.

Many people seek that ability to make their phones faster and improve battery life. ATK does both of these extremely well.

Once again, simply restating this doesn't make it true.

The fast that it continues to be a top download on the Market would suggest that many/most phones users are not satisfied with Android alone.

Actually, it could just be people like you insisting that it's necessary. When I bought my first Android phone, the MyTouch rep told me to install ATK. When my sister-in-law bought her first Android phone, the Verizon rep told her to install ATK. So it's very possible (in fact, probable) that sales reps are majorly responsible for ATK being a top download, and then people like you who are victims of the placebo effect continue to popularize the app despite its not actually improving battery life or performance and also possibly harming performance.

It's funny to me that a lot of people who recommend or stand by task killers complain that their phones become sluggish until they run their task killer. They don't ever entertain the thought that it's because of the task killer that their phones are becoming sluggish or buggy in the first place.

I never run a task killer, and my phone is never sluggish. Why should it ever? It has a 1 GHz processor and 768 MB of RAM.

 

[Bayint Naung]

I don't know what is hansschmucker definition of 'running'?
Are you talking about really running apps(that takes CPU) or cached apps?

If you want to not interfere with other apps, add them to the ignore list). As I&#8217;ve said, ATK gives you a recommended list of processers and apps and I&#8217;ve added Ultimate keyboard, calendar, Lookout, and JuiceDefender.

Until one day you use facebook and while uploading pictures, and it gets killed.

ATK is often used to kill apps and clean memory. We do suggest people use ATK manually kill apps instead of auto killing apps.

From https://market.android.com/details?id=com.rechild.advancedtaskkiller&hl=en,
So how does it different , if you are going to use ATK as suggested, from task manager?
And it's not that easy to distinguish which app needs to be auto-killed....

 

[hansschmucker]

*sigh* Who cares? Wouldn't it be more interesting to talk about when a task killer might do some good (yes, these cases exist... they are not the norm, but they exist). Do we really need teams? What do I care of Hank or somebody else is a firm believer of XY? NOT EVEN REMOTELY!

I don't know what is hansschmucker definition of 'running'

Uh... could you give me a little context... this thread keeps going so far off-topic that I'm having trouble keeping up.

Running: An application that is currently executing some action. Usually happens when an application is focused or right after being notified (for up to 10 seconds). May happen briefly after an application has been pushed into the background.

 

[Bayint Naung]

Running: An application that is currently executing some action. Usually happens when an application is focused or right after being notified (for up to 10 seconds). May happen briefly after an application has been pushed into the background.

With this definition, many running apps make you slow. But if these apps are running for a purpose, what's the point of killing them!
Perhaps you don't want multi-tasking.
Edit: I believe android will give higher priority to user focused app. So that users still feel fast and responsive.

 

[KingOfGreen]

If anyone reads this and wants to make an educated decision. think about this. there are tons of people who if NOTHING ELSE (some may have more ardchoille for example i cant speak on others) have experience user end on android and have proven to be a help to others here. also have provided PLENTY of legitimate information to show and show again that Task Killers are not good for the pet Android in your pocket!

• lunatic59
• ardchoille
• Usta
• Slug
• amlothi
• KingOfGreen (wishful thinking maybe)

anyhow. im out, this is ridiculous.

 

[hansschmucker]

With this definition, many running apps make you slow. But if these apps are running for a purpose, what's the point of killing them!
Perhaps you don't want multi-tasking.
Edit: I believe android will give higher priority to user focused app. So that users still feel fast and responsive.

I really don't want it, which is why I'm so grateful that Android usually doesn't do it

Android is really an attempt to bring single-tasking "PalmOS style" to Linux. Just enhanced with something resembling virtual memory. Every app is usually "open", but only one is "running", except when there's a notification. That's pretty much exactly what PalmOS did (just that PalmOS interrupted the running application when there was a notification, since PalmSource was, due to a strange licensing issue, not allowed to multi-task under these circumstances: so applications had to behave themselves, otherwise they'd block the whole system)

 

[Bayint Naung]

I really don't want it, which is why I'm so grateful that Android usually doesn't do it

? Android is not multi-tasking?

Android is really an attempt to bring single-tasking "PalmOS style" to Linux. Just enhanced with something resembling virtual memory. Every app is usually "open", but only one is "running", except when there's a notification. That's pretty much exactly what PalmOS did

Only one is running? If you are talking about android, you are wrong.

 

[hansschmucker]

I think you misunderstand: that's the concept. That's what they are aiming at: Android only really wants to run one single app at the time. The system (which of course itself also consists of multiple processes, but that's not the point) puts other applications (not that one application is one process, but that's another story: for now we'll act as if one process==one application) to sleep and handles filtering for events. Only when such an event is encountered is the sleeping application woken up again. The aim is to only have the one in the foreground "running". There are dozens of exceptions when things just don't work that way, but that's what they are trying to do: One main application running, others at sleep until notified.

The 10 second timeout for background processes handling an event is a pretty obvious hint

 

[amlothi]

Until one day you use facebook and while uploading pictures, and it gets killed.

Ok, you changed my mind. Task killers are very useful if your last name is Weiner.

anyhow. im out, this is ridiculous.

The terrorists just won.

 

[woop]

I'm going to this post once and make this very clear. Please debate and discuss topics within this thread in a civil and mature manner. Breaking forum rules in order to substantiate one side of an argument will NOT be tolerated. As such, offenders have been dealt with and I ask that everyone continue with the discussion at hand as what has occurred no longer needs to be brought up since it is off topic.

 

[Bayint Naung]

You do have *services*.
Now the thread is becoming more off-topic.

Ok, you changed my mind. Task killers are very useful if your last name is Weiner.

What's the meaning of this.?

 

[hansschmucker]

You do have *services*.

Which is one of the cases where it doesn't work and they have to stray from the single-app-open policy. Like I said, that's what they're aiming at, not necessarily what happens in all cases

The single-app system is a concept, nothing more nothing less. Just compare for yourself how Android handles applications and how a normal desktop OS handles them. Not much similarity, is there?

 

[Bayint Naung]

So back to original topic, No broadcast nor services, app will just live in memory without eating CPU.(in background)
How does Task Killer improve efficiency?

 

[hansschmucker]

Only by shortening the time until a misbehaving application is put to sleep or if an application is (almost maliciously) scheduling itself for background execution over and over again, but for some reason not for re-launching. (needs a really, really stupid developer)

 

[Bayint Naung]

So unless you have misbehave apps, there's no point using task killer.
The real fix would be reporting to developer. or use alternative app...

 

[hansschmucker]

Pretty much, yes.

 

[HankAtrix]

The phones I mentioned are dual-core, therefore they multi-process, as well as multi-task obviously. As for degradation of performance I think this has been covered. People don't see performance degrading. You're flogging a dead horse here I'm afraid.

dave

Dave - Android needs to share the workload of apps and processes across a fixed CPU and Memory (whether it is 1 or 2 processors in current phones). Even though Android is multitasking, it still has a fixed/limited resource for CPU and memory. If you are running many apps, it means the CPU and memory available for running apps is limited (by the hardware, not Android) to process the running apps. Every additional app you have open degrades performance for the running apps and phone.