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!
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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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I am not rooted, so I can't do anything that involves rooting.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
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
Related
Hi,
Since I read up on how the Android OS works I have not used TaskKiller or similar and the OS works great (MCR 2.8).
I think these task killer apps are redundant.
Anyone actually think they are needed at all?
It's true that the system will kill apps itself when the memory is needed, but a side-affect of having 192MB available to android, is that there will be a lot of open apps before that happens.
While some apps will become 'frozen'/ only taking memory and no cpu time, other will not.
Having these apps in memory, and using cpu while not needing/using those apps, will drain the battery faster.
In such a case, a task killer will be useful.
It may do more harm than good though, I missed an alarm because I killed the clock app once
short answer: no, not needed unless an app is draining the battery while the app is not used/necessary.
Theory is one thing, reality is another.
When I hit the 'kill all' button on taskiller my phone definatly speeds up, sometimes it's essential when an app hangs(phandroid has gone like this recently) or is rather resource heavy (like sky map) as the phone gets rather laggy untill it's taskilled.
yeah, what she said ^^^
If an app is still using cpu after you closed it, then (task-)kill dat motherf-
I've got Taskiller ocd! Less stuff running definitely keeps your phone running nice and fast so if I'm not actively using an app then I kill it. Although I do have all the important stuff on the ignore list so the phone doesn't crash... or I miss an alarm like E2K
I'm currently trying to decide which app I like best for the purpose, Taskiller Full or TaskPanel.
TaskPanel has more useful options like Auto-kill however I think it has a bigger memory footprint than Taskiller.
I installed a task killer and noticed that when killing certain apps, the phone just lags real bad. I discontinued use of it and now the phone has no serious pausing. I was killing unknown apps with Android box icons.
heygrl said:
I installed a task killer and noticed that when killing certain apps, the phone just lags real bad. I discontinued use of it and now the phone has no serious pausing. I was killing unknown apps with Android box icons.
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yeah I uninstalled it as well. I heard Android does great job of managing ram and as soon as it gets low, it will start killing other apps automatically.
you need to learn what apps need to stay running, but some apps are just fluff and worthless... you may need to set up you task killer to ignore certain apps like handcent and clock... killing any android processes is usually a bad idea.. I just kill my 3rd party apps that open for no reason or use it to close apps when I am done using my phone for a while...
You should not need a task killer with this phone. Android has been managing its own memory and background services quite nicely for a while now.
SkOrPn said:
You should not need a task killer with this phone. Android has been managing its own memory and background services quite nicely for a while now.
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Thats what i was told but when i uninstalled the task killer my phone lagged with everything i did. Even when closing programs properly it still lagged. Im keeping my task killer.
acjames said:
Thats what i was told but when i uninstalled the task killer my phone lagged with everything i did. Even when closing programs properly it still lagged. Im keeping my task killer.
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yeah maybe its not as good as most people say it is at controlling its own memory usage.
Task Killers = meh,
Android has a way of doing things and that means keeping apps open for some time, I tried using app-killers and it did not seem to make my phones run better, and auto kill everything is even worse...
heygrl said:
I installed a task killer and noticed that when killing certain apps, the phone just lags real bad. I discontinued use of it and now the phone has no serious pausing. I was killing unknown apps with Android box icons.
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idk if youre rooted or not, or if this app works on the vibrant cuz it does an amazing job on the g1, but you could try autokiller, tho it requires root. what it does is change the android memory management settings and will kill apps more frequently depending on the settings you choose.
speedysilwady said:
idk if youre rooted or not, or if this app works on the vibrant cuz it does an amazing job on the g1, but you could try autokiller, tho it requires root. what it does is change the android memory management settings and will kill apps more frequently depending on the settings you choose.
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I still need to use it for those unruly apps but I got so used to it because my old phone would lag with Slacker even in the background and I had to kill it. I've stopped using it and I've stopped having major problems. Just an FYI for those out there that still use one, it's not needed here on a regular basis really.
I noticed that I can't use the "kill all" function in Advanced Task Manager by Arron La any more without making my phone freeze up. My brother suggestion Task Manager by Rhythm Software (he has a MyTouch Slide). This program doesn't give me any problems when killing files and also doesn't list system files (that I've noticed).
The people who are having problems with task killer are the ones that are not setting it up correctly or don't have enough apps installed for it to make any difference.
If you don't setup the ignore list correctly your phone will freak out or make your existing problem worse.
Android 2.2 is a different story though, Froyo is faster without a taskiller
Buddy here's what .....
Download AutoKiller from the market , then go to the dev's webpage ,there he has a lot of information about android and memory management .... then you can make an informed decision .... the lag issue you continue to have .,.,..., you might have to do a hard reset to clear the system of that poorly coded task/app killer ....
Here's some more information http://androidforums.com/samsung-vibrant/124542-constant-apps-restarting-themselves.html
I hope that here on xda we can help people to understand Android and memory management , so they are not fooled by these task/app killers that work against the system ......
heygrl said:
I still need to use it for those unruly apps but I got so used to it because my old phone would lag with Slacker even in the background and I had to kill it. I've stopped using it and I've stopped having major problems. Just an FYI for those out there that still use one, it's not needed here on a regular basis really.
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I used to have the original my touch 3g, lag central, even on custom roms. Task killer was handy, so I got in the Babbitt if killing tasks. I then got me a nexus, and it seemed to have not needed one, but I still used it out of the Babbitt and being paranoid of my plbattery being wasted with apps on the background and lag lol. Well, I'm now done with them, seriously, no need for task killers. I think on this phone it does more damage then good, most apps need to be running on the background, killing them just lags your phone. Like you'd lose signal, or it would run time and date update again, etc.
Task killers may not be necessary for memory management, but it will help save on battery by killing 3rd party apps that stay running in the background. I use Advanced Task Manager myself, and never get any lag when I run it. The main thing you need to "exclude" if you havnt already, is the TWLauncher(or whatever launcher you're running).
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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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.
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.
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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!!
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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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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!
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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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Thank you as well!
I wonder why Google doesn't restrict these from the Market....