Hello all,
I am very new to android, this GT 10.1 being my first android device. I have been unable to figure out how to kill a process and or close apps. I have tried "advanced task killer" & "watchdog" apps, as well as going settings>Applications>force stop on said apps; no luck, running apps still show on the navigation button.
I have searched the GT 10.1 forum with no luck, has anyone had this issue and or have a fix?
There was a lot of talk about task killers on Android phones over the last couple years... As I recall, since Android 2.2, Android terminates apps when needed. I would not recommend a task killer... They can cause system instability when shutting down apps. As best I know, it is the same on the Android 3.x series as well.
Bukem is correct -- as a rule, you don't want to force close an application or service unless it is actually misbehaving. Android doesn't work like Windows. Android is much more efficient about managing background tasks, and there's usually no noticeable performance hit even from extensive multitasking.
Plus, you don't know what every applicable or service is actually doing or whether its needed. By way of example, when the EVO came out a few self-proclaimed experts advised that you could task-kill the Google Talk service to make the phone faster. Turns out, the Google Talk service was used as the universal Google sign-in, so killing it also killed your push Gmail and all other Google services.
Agreed. Task killers haven't been needed for Android since 2.2. Google should save everyone the confusion now and just purge them from the market, in my opinion.
Quote from a well-known dev, cvpcs:
…What people don’t seem to realize is that android is designed to have a large number of tasks stored in memory at all times. Why? Well basically we are talking about a mobile device. On a mobile device things tend to be slower. The hardware isn’t as robust as say a desktop or a laptop, so in order to get that same “snappy” feeling, there have to be workarounds.
One of these is how android deals with memory. Android will load up your apps and then keep them running until they absolutely HAVE to kill them. This is because that way, if you want to re-open an app, the system already has it loaded and can then just resume it instead of reloading it. This provides a significant performance increase.
What a lot of people don’t realize as well is that android kernels have their own task manager. This means that:
it will be more efficient than any app-based task manager as it is run at the kernel level, and
it should be left up to that task killer to decide when to free up memory
There is only one case where having a task killer is a good idea, and that is when you want to kill ONE SPECIFIC APP. Killing all apps is never a good idea. You don’t know what operations they are performing or if they are necessary.
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Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker:
This set-up implies that the goal of killing these apps is to free up memory. Nowhere on the list does it mention the number of CPU cycles each app is consuming, only the memory you’ll free by killing it. As we’ve learned, full memory is not a bad thing—we want to watch out for the CPU, the resource that actually slows down your phone and drains your battery life.
Thus, killing all but the essential apps (or telling Android to kill apps more aggressively with the “autokill” feature) is generally unnecessary. Furthermore, it’s actually possible that this will worsen your phone’s performance and battery life. Whether you’re manually killing apps all the time or telling the task killer to aggressively remove apps from your memory, you’re actually using CPU cycles when you otherwise wouldn’t—killing apps that aren’t doing anything in the first place.
In fact, some of the processes related to those apps will actually start right back up, further draining your CPU. If they don’t, killing those processes can cause other sorts of problems—alarms don’t go off, you don’t receive text messages, or other related apps may force close without warning. All in all, you’re usually better off letting your phone work as intended—especially if you’re more of a casual user. In these instances, a task killer causes more problems than it solves.
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And from a site called NextApp:
Android was designed from the ground up as an operating system (OS) for mobile devices. Its built-in application and memory-management systems were engineered with battery life as one of the most critical concerns.
The Android OS does not work like a desktop operating system. On a desktop OS, like Windows, Mac OS X, or Ubuntu Linux, the user is responsible for closing programs in order to keep a reasonable amount of memory available. On Android, this is not the case. The OS itself automatically removes programs from memory as memory is needed. The OS may also preload applications into memory which it thinks might soon be needed.
Having lots of available empty memory is not a good thing. It takes the same amount of power to hold “nothing” in memory as it does to hold actual data. So, like every other operating system in use today, Android does its best to keep as much important/likely-to-be-used information in memory as possible.
As such, using the task manager feature of SystemPanel to constantly clear memory by killing all apps is strongly NOT RECOMMENDED. This also applies to any other task killer / management program. Generally speaking, you should only “End” applications if you see one which is not working correctly. The “End All” feature can be used if your phone/device is performing poorly and you are uncertain of the cause.
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All those quotes were aggregated for this article, if you want to read more: http://www.droid-life.com/2011/06/02/revisiting-android-task-killers-and-why-you-dont-need-one/
So TL;DR, this:
Droid Life said:
Basically, Android keeps tasks handy because it thinks you’ll want to perform them again in a very short amount of time. If you don’t, it will clear them out for you. It also likes to keep as many things handy as possible so that the overall performance of your device is top notch. If Android were to completely kill off everything that your phone is doing, then it would require more resources to restart all of them and you would likely run into slowness and battery drains. By keeping certain things available to you, your phone is actually running better than it would without. So please, stop killing off tasks and let Android do the work for you.
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Although they are not necessary in every day use, I still recommend having one just in case. Every once in a while, something will go wrong. I guess you could just reboot so it's not a big deal either way. So anyway.. I have advanced task killer but I probably only use it about once a month.
On Linux I am not a hostage of the operating system...
On Android it seems it wants me to be 'cos it knows better.
For example: I use Skype maybe once a week. BUT android assumes that I will use it again and 3 minutes, and keeps it around hoping that I do. I know I won't so I want to kill it (like I did 2.1) so the machine will be more responsive - instead of for CPU to do massive cleanup before I start a new app.
The terrible system instability, the immediate phone damage - this is spreading FUD. Nothing terrible will happen.
Grrr...
viulian said:
o be 'cos it knows better.
For example: I use Skype maybe once a week. BUT android assumes that I will use it again and 3 minutes, and keeps it around hoping that I do. I know I won't so I want to kill it (like I did 2.1) so the machine will be more responsive - instead of for CPU to do massive cleanup before I start a new app.
The terrible system instability, the immediate phone damage - this is spreading FUD. Nothing terrible will happen.
Grrr...
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Click to collapse
You see this is EXACTLY what the anti-taskkiller people dont understand. They think apps get closed and memory gets reorganized like MAGIC instantly. They dont understand that it takes CPU power to do this which is why you see slight lag when your memory gets low. This lag is from the system reallocating memory and this has been proven via acatlogs.
Related
hi i have only just got the hero and was wondering how to close apps properly. i have noticed that when you hold the home key for a while a window pops up showing some apps ...is this how you close them? or is simply pressing the home key shutting them .
The long press on home just brings up a list of apps that have been recently run. It's almost a task switcher, but not quite!
Many apps will exit if you "back" out of them - i.e. when in the app keep pressing back until you get back to the home screen. However, this isn't the case for all applications. Some may have an explicit exit or close button, whereas others may have nothing at all.
However, Android is pretty good at managing its own applications, and will kill/exit them as necessary. In my experience, there's little to be gained from explicitly killing applications using a task killer, but some people swear by it.
Regards,
Dave
foxmeister said:
The long press on home just brings up a list of apps that have been recently run. It's almost a task switcher, but not quite!
Many apps will exit if you "back" out of them - i.e. when in the app keep pressing back until you get back to the home screen. However, this isn't the case for all applications. Some may have an explicit exit or close button, whereas others may have nothing at all.
However, Android is pretty good at managing its own applications, and will kill/exit them as necessary. In my experience, there's little to be gained from explicitly killing applications using a task killer, but some people swear by it.
Regards,
Dave
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Most Task Killers free up memory thats used by background apps.
so basicly back out of the app and let android do the rest of the worring. thanks for advise
risterdid said:
Most Task Killers free up memory thats used by background apps.
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Yes, but the point is that Android itself will start killing applications if it starts to run low on resources. (see http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/fundamentals.html)
Regards,
Dave
I'll attempt to sum it up once and for all, to try and set the record straight.
In Android's virtual machine, there is no functional differentiation between "closing" an app and "switching away from" an app. They are the same (the exception is things like music players which need to keep playing after you switch away from them, but even then only the 'service' part needs to keep running).
Whenever you switch away from an app, its current state is remembered so that even if it is effectively "killed" it can be returned to in just that state next time it's opened. Then Android either kills the process or it keeps it open, killing it when it needs the memory. You won't notice any difference between either scenario, except maybe that an app loads a little bit faster if it was kept in memory. At any rate, "closed" apps do not "run", and they do not take RAM or CPU cycles from other apps.
In terms of process/memory management, Android's VM has more in common with a web browser than a desktop OS - sure it can remember your state when you switch apps (like switching tabs, going back/forward/home in a browser) but whether behind the scenes it loads it all into and out of memory when you switch back and forth, or it all stays in memory is irrelevant to the user. Nobody worries that a long forum page on another tab or in their back button history is occupying 80 megs in the background or not, the browser takes care of loading/unloading it from RAM as needed, and that's just like how Android's VM works when switching between various pages of various apps.
Once you understand this you understand that all these 'task killer' apps are really unnecessary - all they'll do is make it slower to restart an app once closed. They don't reclaim RAM that was previously unavailable to other apps.
To cut a long story short, pressing "home" is a great way to close an app, whether you want to return to it later or not.
MercuryStar said:
Nobody worries that a long forum page on another tab or in their back button history is occupying 80 megs in the background or not, the browser takes care of loading/unloading it from RAM as needed, and that's just like how Android's VM works when switching between various pages of various apps.
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that is not true for me, my firefox can eat a lot of resources as long as it is open. and i can see a performance difference when having a lot of apps open on my hero. not that it would be a problem, but you can see the menus scrolling more "fluid" after killing all bg apps, for example.
kendong2 said:
you can see the menus scrolling more "fluid" after killing all bg apps, for example.
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I would wager that's the placebo effect. It feels faster because you believe it should. If you understand how the OS works you realise that apps you've switched away from do nothing to slow down or take memory from any other app (see my exception above about apps that launch background services such as music player).
kendong2 said:
that is not true for me, my firefox can eat a lot of resources as long as it is open. and i can see a performance difference when having a lot of apps open on my hero. not that it would be a problem, but you can see the menus scrolling more "fluid" after killing all bg apps, for example.
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I do notice this too. There is a general 'sluggishness' with my Hero when there are lots of app sleeping/running/hibernating/whatever in the background. As soon as I kill off a few unwanted ones, all the menus scroll faster and home screens change quicker.
And this is not the placebo effect either. The menu's DO scroll more fluidly after I have killed a few apps, regardless of how you describe the RAM management...
Micksta said:
And this is not the placebo effect either. The menu's DO scroll more fluidly after I have killed a few apps, regardless of how you describe the RAM management...
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exactly, you can tell easily if it is one motion or looks like it is "skipping frames". even it is only because it takes the device some cpu cycles to kill other apps, it does make a difference. like i said a rather cosmetic one, since it doesn't really effect the general usage. nevertheless i like to know what is running and what's not, and so far im running good with advanced task manager free.
WOW i didnt expect a massive response for my question but i thank you all for your responses
MercuryStar said:
I would wager that's the placebo effect. It feels faster because you believe it should. If you understand how the OS works you realise that apps you've switched away from do nothing to slow down or take memory from any other app (see my exception above about apps that launch background services such as music player).
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that's not true, my phone gets so sluggish sometimes that i can't answer a phone call, the phone doesn't register that i press the answer button. and when that happends i usually have like 20 mb of free ram.
Daniehabazin said:
that's not true, my phone gets so sluggish sometimes that i can't answer a phone call, the phone doesn't register that i press the answer button. and when that happends i usually have like 20 mb of free ram.
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Just as a matter of interest, do you use swapper or AppsToSD?
My phone never gets into the situation you've described, but even though I do have the full version of TasKiller, I almost never use it, and I don't see a need at present to use AppsToSD.
In addition, I'd imagine that having a swap partition would cause an issue with Androids own memory management, since I guess it can't distinguish between real and "virtual" memory. So where a "non-swap" device would start killing processes, a "swap" device would just continue on regardless because it thinks it still has physical memory available.
Regards,
Dave
Yesterday I downloaded "Advanced Task Killer Free"... anyone who has experiences with this? Is is better than just "Task Killer" or is it just an updated version of "Task Killer" ?
thanks!
have been using atk free for a while (lol 2 weeks since i got the hero) now, i really like it. its advantage over all other task managers IMHO: it has an ignore list, things you ignore are not shown in the running tasks list. in the list you have check boxes, where you can select the tasks that will be killed, and this list is remembered. for example "htc sense" is on my ignore list, but "music" is only checked, so i can uncheck it when i don't want to kill it while listening to music. next time i want to kill music i just have to tap the checkbox, no dealing with the ignore list here...
Daniehabazin said:
that's not true, my phone gets so sluggish sometimes that i can't answer a phone call, the phone doesn't register that i press the answer button. and when that happends i usually have like 20 mb of free ram.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I get this problem a lot, and in answer to fox meister, I don't have AppsToSD.
I don't know if the problem is RAM or CPU related, but the CPU often jumps to 100% when things are really slow.
Is the issue likely to be background apps, or widgets even?
Sausageman said:
I get this problem a lot, and in answer to fox meister, I don't have AppsToSD.
I don't know if the problem is RAM or CPU related, but the CPU often jumps to 100% when things are really slow.
Is the issue likely to be background apps, or widgets even?
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Click to collapse
Same for me with the processor.
When i reboot my phone i usually have 90 mb of free ram, after starting a few applications, like browser and phonebook, it plummets down to 20 mb.
I do have some extra applications that starts as services, like systray monitor and 3g watchdog.
when i open atk after a fresh reboot i see that some applications that i don't even use is started, like footprints, settings and calendar, even my webrowser is started, whats up with that, can it be disabled?
I think the issue is that we have some applications that autostart withous us using them, and also programs that we download that autostarts as services and maybe having memory leaks...
I came to chime in with my experiences of the CDMA hero and sluggishness.
I watch memory like a hawk (thanks Mogul) and I too have around 80-90mb free ram on start, but it can get down to around 30 rather quickly. Once it gets down here, I notice that screen transitions and random lag occurs in apps. If I go into Advanced Task Killer and kill many of the stragglers, my menus are as smooth as can be.
It is most certainly NOT a placebo effect.
One thing I really like about Advanced Task Killer (pay version) is that it has the "Auto End" feature, where it will kill all apps not chosen to be excluded at the interval that you choose. For example, I have determined the system applications that need to be on all the time, and I've excluded those. Every hour, ATK kills everything else. For the most part, my Hero hovers around 70MB now at all times, although it can get down there to around 30-40MB if I'm right around the 1 hour mark.
That feature alone makes it much better than Taskiller IMO. Totally worth 99 cents
This definition would imply that android works exactly like the iphone osx? I mean saving "screenshots" of the last state of an app. But NOT having real multitasking?
Because it's not possible to have multitasking and at the same time "inactive" background apps everytime you hit the home button...
MercuryStar said:
I'll attempt to sum it up once and for all, to try and set the record straight.
In Android's virtual machine, there is no functional differentiation between "closing" an app and "switching away from" an app. They are the same (the exception is things like music players which need to keep playing after you switch away from them, but even then only the 'service' part needs to keep running).
Whenever you switch away from an app, its current state is remembered so that even if it is effectively "killed" it can be returned to in just that state next time it's opened. Then Android either kills the process or it keeps it open, killing it when it needs the memory. You won't notice any difference between either scenario, except maybe that an app loads a little bit faster if it was kept in memory. At any rate, "closed" apps do not "run", and they do not take RAM or CPU cycles from other apps.
In terms of process/memory management, Android's VM has more in common with a web browser than a desktop OS - sure it can remember your state when you switch apps (like switching tabs, going back/forward/home in a browser) but whether behind the scenes it loads it all into and out of memory when you switch back and forth, or it all stays in memory is irrelevant to the user. Nobody worries that a long forum page on another tab or in their back button history is occupying 80 megs in the background or not, the browser takes care of loading/unloading it from RAM as needed, and that's just like how Android's VM works when switching between various pages of various apps.
Once you understand this you understand that all these 'task killer' apps are really unnecessary - all they'll do is make it slower to restart an app once closed. They don't reclaim RAM that was previously unavailable to other apps.
To cut a long story short, pressing "home" is a great way to close an app, whether you want to return to it later or not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Shahpur.Azizpour said:
This definition would imply that android works exactly like the iphone osx? I mean saving "screenshots" of the last state of an app. But NOT having real multitasking?
Because it's not possible to have multitasking and at the same time "inactive" background apps everytime you hit the home button...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, you've not understood the explanation.
The iPhone will always* terminate an application that isn't on its list of "approved" multi-tasking apps once it isn't active any more (i.e. you've switched tasks).
Android will try to keep whatever it can in memory, but eventually will start killing processes in order to keep the system running.
So, if you're on an iPhone listening to something on Spotify and you want to browse something on the web, the iPhone will "kill" Spotify when you switch to the web browser. On Android this won't occur except in the most critical of resource low situations, but then again, I'd imagine other apps would get killed before Spotify.
Read this article, specifically the section from "Component Lifecycles" onwards specifically "Activity Lifecycle", "Saving activity state" and "Processes and lifecycles".
Regards,
Dave
* Unless it has been jailbroken!
Hi,
I installed Amazon App Store app to get one of the free app of the days. But now, it keeps running in the background. Probably collecting info.
I added the app to the Auto-End list (where it SHOULD kill the app after 2 minutes of screen off). The Amazon app seems to start when phone boots up. It also someone resurrects itself. I've made sure to not use it, and at some point during the day I checked running tasks and there it is.
If I kill it manually, it eventually shows up again some time during the day.
There are other apps that turn on by themselves on startup, but don't resurrect themselves. On windows, it's easy to manage auto-startup services. It's in the administrative tool. Is there the equivalent of this on Android?
Amazon is annoying like that; it does the same thing with me. Its really not hurting your battery or phone but just looking at it can be annoying so i understand. If it really bothers you that much get "titanium backup" from the market and freeze it when you aren't using it. Also your phone is smart enough to close apps/end processes on its own, moto just put the task killer there as it really serves no purpose. Also auto killing apps isnt smart; your phone probably uses more battery when it has to open up a new process everytime you open an app since you autokill and dont let it manage process/apps on its own. Android likes to let apps that aren't being used rest in memory in the background...id suggest you stop auto killing apps and do some research for yourself on how the android linux kernel works.
Thanks.
I did read into Android developer's way of thinking about how apps on a smart phone should behave, and their philosophy regarding memory management.
However, this philosophy opens up the possibility for abuse by app developers (Amazon). Programs that I use maybe once a month really don't need to be running (especially on startup), regardless of how little memory they use up, or how awesome Android's memory management scheme is.
I don't intend on micromanaging every process. Just those that are obvious wastes.
coachclass said:
Thanks.
I did read into Android developer's way of thinking about how apps on a smart phone should behave, and their philosophy regarding memory management.
However, this philosophy opens up the possibility for abuse by app developers (Amazon). Programs that I use maybe once a month really don't need to be running (especially on startup), regardless of how little memory they use up, or how awesome Android's memory management scheme is.
I don't intend on micromanaging every process. Just those that are obvious wastes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree with you. Try out bloatware freezer or other apps in the market that blk apps from starting up when the phone turns on. Android definitely needs to get small issues like this fixed in future builds for sure.
I have the LG G2x.
I often go to Running Services and check what's running. I am under the impression that this is a good way of knowing which apps run in the background, and how much they consume (memory).
AM I WRONG about this? Sometimes I will uninstall an app if I see it won't close for a long time for no apparent reason - assuming it's slowing down my phone.
THANKS
hmm.....think u dont need to do this. and if u want to know the correct details of all running process and activities then install some advanced task managers from market. also you may kill them all together using that app. may include exclude list....so on!!
Sent from my MB860 using xda premium
I really don't see why you should close the services, unless you are actually experiencing performance problems. Android should be efficient enough to shut down anything that takes way too much resources...
A running services doesn't necessarily mean that it is doing something in the background, it just means that it hasn't been killed and is ready to do whatever it does best.
So unless you have a really old phone with very little RAM or you are actually experiencing performance problems, you shouldn't worry. But it is always good to keep an eye on what is going on once in a while anyway ;-)
if your phone has enough ram and also if the running services dont harm the performance of your device you shouldnt be worried about that ....but i wud still suggest u to use the ram manager instead of closing the running apps in settings
Android doesn't need any sort of micro-managing when it comes to resources. It manages itself, right up until the point where someone does something stupid like installing a 'Task-Killer' or 'RAM Optimiser'.
Stop trying to sabotage your phone and start using it instead!
DirkGently said:
Android doesn't need any sort of micro-managing when it comes to resources. It manages itself, right up until the point where someone does something stupid like installing a 'Task-Killer' or 'RAM Optimiser'.
Stop trying to sabotage your phone and start using it instead!
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Click to collapse
FINALLY ! I was expecting this would be the case with Android as well. THANK YOU !!!!!!
DirkGently said:
Android doesn't need any sort of micro-managing when it comes to resources. It manages itself, right up until the point where someone does something stupid like installing a 'Task-Killer' or 'RAM Optimiser'.
Stop trying to sabotage your phone and start using it instead!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Very true Task Killers and the like have been proven to use more memory than anything else. Also they tend to aggrivate a low Memory situation. Some task killers will prematurely shut down programs, the program auto-restarts to finish the task. Which causes even more memory to be allocated. Sometimes a program will have to restart several times causing a larger than usual memory drain. So long story short, stay away from Task Killers.
prboy1969 said:
Very true Task Killers and the like have been proven to use more memory than anything else. Also they tend to aggrivate a low Memory situation. Some task killers will prematurely shut down programs, the program auto-restarts to finish the task. Which causes even more memory to be allocated. Sometimes a program will have to restart several times causing a larger than usual memory drain. So long story short, stay away from Task Killers.
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Click to collapse
Thank you as well!
I wonder why Google doesn't restrict these from the Market....
I have kinda nooby question... i am using a phone with stock gingerbread and i am using an advanced task killer. I know a lot of people say that I shouldn't do it, but it just makes my phone a lot faster and smoother. As a noob, i have one question: is task killer really harmful to my phone and is it better for me to not use it? If you say yes, please provide me some specific reason why. Thank you ask much guys!
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
its not that bad... but u should not kill background services!
keep settings on safe... don't use aggressive mode
applications u know u use often for example- browser or music player... u can add to excluded section... currently im using ZDBox and it works perfect... it also has additional features that you will need... hope this helps
I only use the ATK to kill an app that's not responding well.
For example, when I was using CM7, sometimes my Google Reader app would hang and display a loading symbol for a long time instead of displaying my articles, and the arrow that shows transmission over the network wasn't displaying so I knew it wasn't waiting on data, I would use ATK to kill ONLY Google Reader. Then I could go back into the app and it would load very quickly.
But since I switched to an ICS ROM, I haven't had that same issue and haven't had a need for ATK.
Also, do note that it does take processing power, and therefore battery power, when your phone decides to restart any of those apps you are killing, and it will restart apps.
For a great explanatory article, see here:
http://androidandme.com/2011/11/app...lers-still-dont-give-you-better-battery-life/
and also the links in the phrase "(see here, and here, and here)".
So in short, they are not exactly "harmful" but they don't provide any real benefit if you "kill everything, every time."
It is a common myth that more RAM = better performance, and this is a result of the market being dominated by Microsoft for so long. Android does not equal a desktop OS. Free RAM literally does nothing. In fact, it is wasteful to have bunch of free RAM. Android manages RAM very effectively and aggressively works to ensure that you have sufficient resources to do whatever it is you want to do. If you notice an increase in performance with a task killer, it is because you have a misbehaving app. Watchdog is the only task manager I would recommend, all it does is watch for apps that are using an abnormal amount of resources and alerts you. Part of the Android experience is the emulated multi-tasking, or having several apps saved to memory simultaneously to facilitate ease of switching between them. An app in the background will not affect the performance of your device, it is not using any resources. Aside from that, if you end a task, it will usually just start right up again, using more resources, because that is how Android is designed to work.
So, I would say finding the misbehaving app is a much better option than a task killer. They were important in eclair, maybe even FroYo. But anything above that they are unnecessary.
i dont really believe in android"s app managmentbut task killers make it only worst IMHO
I have to agree with member devator22.
Android is not Windows. Android is basically Linux and Linux is using a different memory management than Windows does. (Although Windows has got a lot of improvements during the last years)
RAM which isn't used, is wasted! That's a fact.
So, if you run a specific application, some of its data my be cached. Linux is reporting this as "buffered" (you can see the amount by running the 'top' command)
There might be a more or less big chance to hit this cache. If so, the data is loaded much faster ( definetly > 10 ) than if it had to be requested from the file system.
By killing your application by a task manger you are releasing this buffered resources (actually you are forcing the OS to release it). In the worst case you are wasting your advantage of loading already cached data from the RAM. In the best case you are gaining nothing because your device has to load it from the file system anyway.
(sorry for my english )
Get watchdog!
/end
*just because nobody understands you, doesn't make you an artist..
Thank you so much for these replies! I really appreciate it! I decided to keep my task killer but not use it aggressively. I probably will use it to end apps that i really find it pointless. And also to the people who said android dies it's own task managing, you're right but wrong at the same time. When i didn't use my task killer, android did killed some apps in in order to launch more apps, but it left only like 10mb of 300mb, which i found little odd and also it mainly killed launchers which was very annoying.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Task killer will speed up your phone if you know what you're doing. Only kill tasks that you are familiar with...e.g. apps that you know you have launched and won't be using anymore. Those apps running in the background can slow down your device.
If I'm on ICS, its better to use the bult-in task killer, or download one from the market?
Guys, he's not saying he does it for the memory. He says the phone's smoother. I don't know whether this is true, but if there are background tasks performing operations that he doesn't want them to do, it's *absolutely appropriate* to kill them.
The flip side of that is that the applications will eventually be automatically started again, and that startup takes extra CPU time. As long as the process startup and process killing happens when the screen is off, I would think this could improve the responsiveness.
But I think on most people's phones, the background processes really don't use a lot of CPU...
I know by default even Gbs memory management isn't the best. The app priorities are a bit weird aand the launcher gets killed to easily. Running the v6 supercharger scripts and making the launcher hard to kill and fixing the priorities and changing the oom settings makes any from wicked fast
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Instead of killing an app over and over again install something like Gemini App Manager and disable the app's autostart permissions. For example, dropbox and dropbox sync are set to automatically start at boot or when there's a connectivity change. I understand why they're set to do that but for my purposes I only needed them to start when I actually used them.
Having said that, I no longer use Gemini and have never used an automatic task killer. I think android (ICS) does a good enough job managing it's memory that I don't need to be anal about micromanaging it myself. I think it also helps that I'm not an appaholic. I'm very picky about what I install and will only keep an app installed if I regularly use it.
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Jinx Lumos Joke said:
If I'm on ICS, its better to use the bult-in task killer, or download one from the market?
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Built-In is much better
im on ics on my captivate and it runs beyond smooth
like stated before having free RAM with not do anything
android has a good way of muti tasking
How can I do this? I noticed yesterday that my scramble with friends app with only 2 games, was taking up 135Mb RAM. I'm sure there's another issue behind there, but this got me noticing other apps that don't need to always be open and running, but for some reason are. How can I stop these apps from auto launching and running in the background?
cgibsong002 said:
How can I do this? I noticed yesterday that my scramble with friends app with only 2 games, was taking up 135Mb RAM. I'm sure there's another issue behind there, but this got me noticing other apps that don't need to always be open and running, but for some reason are. How can I stop these apps from auto launching and running in the background?
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Just because something is loaded doesnt mean its actually running. Android takes programs that are often used and load them into RAM so that they are ready and waiting when you want to run them. They are then dropped out of memory when that memory is needed for something else. Read up on memory management to get a better idea. If you want to kill it anyways, you can probably just use Titanium to freeze it, but this requires root.
Thanks for the response. I'm rooted and also running RAM manager. It seems that certain programs are taking up my RAM that don't need to be. Another example, words with friends, was in my RAM usage after reboot, and I've never even used this game before. Games like scramble with friends I'd imagine always need to be running or in active RAM since that game has notifications and built in messaging. But I don't need to constantly have that app checking for new data. I tried setting the in app settings to check every few hours rather than 5 minutes, but it was still shown as taking 130MB of RAM usage (though the number is normal now after reboot).
So, it sounds like there is no way.. or what you're saying is more of, no need? I just don't want a bunch of little used apps taking up my active memory.
cgibsong002 said:
Thanks for the response. I'm rooted and also running RAM manager. It seems that certain programs are taking up my RAM that don't need to be. Another example, words with friends, was in my RAM usage after reboot, and I've never even used this game before. Games like scramble with friends I'd imagine always need to be running or in active RAM since that game has notifications and built in messaging. But I don't need to constantly have that app checking for new data. I tried setting the in app settings to check every few hours rather than 5 minutes, but it was still shown as taking 130MB of RAM usage (though the number is normal now after reboot).
So, it sounds like there is no way.. or what you're saying is more of, no need? I just don't want a bunch of little used apps taking up my active memory.
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No real need. Android sees that you use this app a good bit so it preloads it, and it's sitting there in unused RAM untill it's either called upon to run or untill another process needs that RAM that its using.The application is not running and that RAM would otherwise be sitting unused, so there's no need to get rid of it unless it happened to be a suspicious application. This process is what gets alot of folks all wound up about never having enough RAM because they think that almost all of their RAM is being used for running processes when in reality this isn't really true, kinda half true.
Download Autostarts from the Market, it will let you prevent apps from starting automatically.
And what Chief Geek said is true, he's missing a big part of the picture, and I see statements like his all the time. Yes Android does a good job of loading things in and out of memory as needed. However, if there is crap you don't care about coming in and out of memory all the time, then that means Android is going to dump stuff out of memory that you DO care about (browser, games, etc.) So if you have a bunch of extra crap running, that means if you pause a game, check and email, and come back, Android may have released it from memory and you have to wait for it to reload. If you cut back on the things that are constantly running, it will keep more of your apps that you care about in memory longer, meaning when you go back to that game they will be there right away.
The more stuff you can prevent from running the better. I use Titanium Backup to freeze stuff I will never use. I use autostarts to prevent certain apps from running at startup that I don't want to - Maps, Facebook, etc. Doing this gives me tons of extra free RAM which translates to more useful multitasking.
EvoXOhio said:
And what Chief Geek said is true, he's missing a big part of the picture, and I see statements like his all the time.
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I understand where your coming from, as this is a very common argument, but what you didn't mention is your method favors empty/available RAM for multitasking while sacrificing fast launches leading to some folks experiencing a laggy system. I completely agree with freezing the junk as the bloat always seems to have pointless priority, but I feel as once these steps are taken that android does a perfectly fine job of managing RAM. Very rarely do I have to wait for applications to reopen as I'm jumping back and forth between them and never have trouble multitasking. I'm not going to be curt and say your theory is wrong, I'll leave it as just another way of running your device as it certainley has it's merits, but I don't agree that it's for the average user who is more likey to be jumping from one app to another and not back and forth between the same ones needing all the data to be exactly where they left it.
Chief Geek said:
I understand where your coming from, as this is a very common argument, but what you didn't mention is your method favors empty/available RAM for multitasking while sacrificing fast launches leading to some folks experiencing a laggy system. I completely agree with freezing the junk as the bloat always seems to have pointless priority, but I feel as once these steps are taken that android does a perfectly fine job of managing RAM. Very rarely do I have to wait for applications to reopen as I'm jumping back and forth between them and never have trouble multitasking. I'm not going to be curt and say your theory is wrong, I'll leave it as just another way of running your device as it certainley has it's merits, but I don't agree that it's for the average user who is more likey to be jumping from one app to another and not back and forth between the same ones needing all the data to be exactly where they left it.
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You're misunderstanding what I am saying. I am suggesting to prevent apps you don't care about from getting loaded into memory automatically at startup. By doing that, it means more free memory for the system, which means better multitasking.
My method doesn't sacrifice fast launches at all. If anything, by having more free memory, it means more applications will remain in memory, which equals better multitasking and faster relaunches. Initial launches will be the same either way.
I am NOT suggesting to prevent apps you care about from autostarting - just the crap that you never use nor care about. Maybe that's where you misunderstood me.
EvoXOhio said:
You're misunderstanding what I am saying. I am suggesting to prevent apps you don't care about from getting loaded into memory automatically at startup. By doing that, it means more free memory for the system, which means better multitasking.
My method doesn't sacrifice fast launches at all. If anything, by having more free memory, it means more applications will remain in memory, which equals better multitasking and faster relaunches. Initial launches will be the same either way.
I am NOT suggesting to prevent apps you care about from autostarting - just the crap that you never use nor care about. Maybe that's where you misunderstood me.
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I appologize for the misunderstanding, I assumed that since we were discussing an app that he says he does use that you meant to prevent apps such as this all together. Such is an argument that some make in an attempt to maximize the amount of available unused RAM.
Chief Geek said:
I appologize for the misunderstanding, I assumed that since we were discussing an app that he says he does use that you meant to prevent apps such as this all together. Such is an argument that some make in an attempt to maximize the amount of available unused RAM.
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I was addressing what he said here:
but this got me noticing other apps that don't need to always be open and running, but for some reason are. How can I stop these apps from auto launching and running in the background?
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But in all honesty, if his app is using 135MB of RAM when doing nothing, it is probably better off being prevented from running in the background entirely. 135MB is less than 1/3 of the free RAM on the system after a fresh boot.
I been using system tuner pro. You can freezes apps stop them from start up. It also has a task manager that you can choose which apps run what you want to kill.you can also exclude apps so if you kill all it will keep the apps you need running like widget locker bln or avast and kill the rest. Also gives you in depth everything on yor phone
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+1 for Autostarts
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kimocal said:
+1 for Autostarts
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+2 for Autostarts.
The best by far is Gemini app manager... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.seasmind.android.gmappmgr
long press on the icon of the app to get a menu with an option to disable start up.
And the nice part it has very granular selection of start up permissions.