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Hey Everyone,
Just got my Droid Eris yesterday and I'm having fun exploring the phone and checking everything out.
One question, I noticed that many apps (in fact, almost all) don't have a direct "Quit" or "Exit" command. So I'm usually pressing "back" or "home" when I'm done with something. This left me wondering though... when I use "back" or "home", does the app actually exit? From what I can tell, it doesn't... so does the OS automatically clean up these apps from time to time? I came from WinMo 6.1, and it was irritating that everything defaulted to running in the background. How does Android treat it? Is there something special in this regard with the HTC Sense UI? I've seen there are some third-party task manager apps you can get... are they worth getting? Or just "let the phone do it's thing" and i will be fine?
Thanks!
I use a Task Manager from the Market called "Taskiller." But I'm still trying to figure out how the Hero handles the apps because sometimes it gets sluggish and taskiller helps out but then theres other times when I have all sorts of apps open and it runs smoothly, lol, I guess it just works sometimes.
I wonder if it's like the iPhone, where it kills the task when you hit the "Home" button. It doesn't seem like it, as some apps seem to just come up instantly when go back in them, as if I was "switching" to them, and no re-opening them...
false_apology said:
I wonder if it's like the iPhone, where it kills the task when you hit the "Home" button. It doesn't seem like it, as some apps seem to just come up instantly when go back in them, as if I was "switching" to them, and no re-opening them...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No I dont think thats the case because Android has a special way of "Multitasking," though I'm not completely informed so you might have to research that on your own. But like I said download a Task Manager from the market so you can see how much available memory there is.
By default, Android applications never really "close" as their components can be called upon at any time. (Android applications are structured to be very modular, allowing individual components to be used from each.) When an application needs memory immediately, and another hasn't used it for a while, it shoves the old app into what's called swap space (presumably it's on your SD card) while the new one takes over. This is why you'll occasionally see a delay while performing a "hard" operation (like opening an app) while the system is under heavy load. That's the old app's memory getting written out to temporary storage and the other one taking it over.
At least this is my understanding of the situation.
From what I've heard Android (linux) does a much better job of managing the memory used by our apps. And, that we "...shouldn't have to use a task killer..." to close out apps that are running in the background, especially on our phones.
For instance, the myTouch 3G usually only gets about 20-30 MB of RAM freed after a full clean up of background apps, the Eris will have about 80+ MB after a cleanup and they both feel about the same to me.
I still use Task Panel to close my apps sometimes because I just like starting fresh in an app from time to time. Also if things start getting fishy (screen stuttering, touch screen not working properly) I'll kill all running apps to see if it fixes the problem which in some cases it just does not and a reboot is still required.
I have found that by holding the home key it will bring up all the apps so you can switch to the one that you want so it is still running them in the background.
refthemc said:
I use a Task Manager from the Market called "Taskiller." But I'm still trying to figure out how the Hero handles the apps because sometimes it gets sluggish and taskiller helps out but then theres other times when I have all sorts of apps open and it runs smoothly, lol, I guess it just works sometimes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i use a Task application called Task Manager. It gives lists of all Applications running, all process and even has an uninstall feature. It also has a auto end application feature but on my eris it's greyed out(maybe Pro only?)
Here are a couple of links that I found on this subject. Don't mind that it says Hero in the thread title it talks about android phones in general. Also something to look into once we get the Eris rooted in the second link.
Task Managers and your Hero by romeosidvicious @androidforums.com
How to configure Android's *internal* taskkiller by androcheck @xda-developers.com
I am new to Android - just got a Droid 3.
How do I stop the system from auto-killing a certain app? When I play Angry Birds, if the phone goes to sleep on timeout, when I turn it back on, the App has to re-load from scratch (rather than opening to where I left off last time). I'm assuming the system decided to kill it for lack of memory, but how do I STOP it from doing that (like an ignore list)?
Will I need a third party app?
Any help is appreciated!
not really. the Android system does a pretty good job of reclaiming unused memory. ive been dealing with this for a while trying to keep a replacement lock screen in memory
Sounds like Verizon installed a task killer. I know their employees do that saying you need one. But you don't. Make sure you uninstall it. It is most likely set to kill apps off ever x minutes. Usually Android keeps foreground apps in memory for a long time unless the system needs it. But doesn't sound like it would. I wonder what the Droid 3 memory settings are for stock now. I have the Evo 3D and they are set at a higher threshold(as I'm kills unused apps sooner) compared to my older HTC phones(Evo and Hero). How long do you let the phone sit idle before coming back?
Sent from my iPhone with the bigger GeeBees.
notasimpleway said:
Sounds like Verizon installed a task killer. I know their employees do that saying you need one. But you don't. Make sure you uninstall it. It is most likely set to kill apps off ever x minutes. Usually Android keeps foreground apps in memory for a long time unless the system needs it. But doesn't sound like it would. I wonder what the Droid 3 memory settings are for stock now. I have the Evo 3D and they are set at a higher threshold(as I'm kills unused apps sooner) compared to my older HTC phones(Evo and Hero). How long do you let the phone sit idle before coming back?
Sent from my iPhone with the bigger GeeBees.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not obvious which program that would be - there's nothing called Task Killer. Plus, most of the VZW bloatware can't be uninstalled anyway. Apart from rooting (locked bootloader on Droid 3), what can I do to force it to stay open?
Also, it gets killed immediately on turning off the phone. As in, I start the game, hit sleep, hit wake a second later and the game reloads from scratch. Very irritating.
Any thoughts are appreciated, thanks!
jbroses said:
It's not obvious which program that would be - there's nothing called Task Killer. Plus, most of the VZW bloatware can't be uninstalled anyway. Apart from rooting (locked bootloader on Droid 3), what can I do to force it to stay open?
Also, it gets killed immediately on turning off the phone. As in, I start the game, hit sleep, hit wake a second later and the game reloads from scratch. Very irritating.
Any thoughts are appreciated, thanks!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I just tested this with Angry Birds from the time I posted till just now and it was right where I left the game. It may be called Advanced Task Manager. Or something like that. And you should be able to uninstall it. It would have been installed by the person selling the phone and not at the factory.
Sent from my iPhone with the bigger GeeBees.
Go to the Market, download Spare Parts. Open and scroll down to Activity/Process Management. Select normal. It may not have been the problem, but worth a shot. Are you hitting the home button before putting the phone to sleep? What do you see immediately upon turning the screen on and unlocking the phone? Angry Birds? The home screen?
Sent from my iPhone with the bigger GeeBees.
When you haven't used an app for a long time, Android automatically recycles all open activities from the app, except the root activity.
By default, every application runs in its own Linux process. Android starts the process when any of the application’s code needs to be executed, and shuts down the process when it’s no longer needed and system resources are required by other applications.
[...]
If the user leaves a task for a long time, the system clears the task of all activities except the root activity. When the user returns to the task again, it’s as the user left it, except that only the initial activity is present. The idea is that, after a time, users will likely have abandoned what they were doing before and are returning to the task to begin something new
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/ (sorry I can't make a link yet)
Shinigami20 said:
When you haven't used an app for a long time, Android automatically recycles all open activities from the app, except the root activity.
From geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/ (sorry I can't make a link yet)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it actually happens instantly. in other words - open angry birds, begin level. sleep phone, wake phone. angry birds reloads from the beginning. this is all within the span of 5 secs.
i thought it might be my lock screen - widgetlock, but i disabled that and it just happened again, this time with opera mini as i was writing this. I was writing this post, went to a text, came back to opera within 30 secs and it had shut down and reopened (no tab with my partially composed message).
is the droid 3 just shutting things down more aggressively? is there a way to tweak that? maybe too much other crap is running and I should get a task killer? thoughts?
jbroses said:
it actually happens instantly. in other words - open angry birds, begin level. sleep phone, wake phone. angry birds reloads from the beginning. this is all within the span of 5 secs.
i thought it might be my lock screen - widgetlock, but i disabled that and it just happened again, this time with opera mini as i was writing this. I was writing this post, went to a text, came back to opera within 30 secs and it had shut down and reopened (no tab with my partially composed message).
is the droid 3 just shutting things down more aggressively? is there a way to tweak that? maybe too much other crap is running and I should get a task killer? thoughts?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
do not sleep your device, try entering level then return to home switch to other apps. Then open angry bird again and see what happen
On my desire Z, it kill the app every time i sleep the phone. Keep the phone alive then I have 3 apps running at same time without being killed. But it's not likely that I have RAM shortage. 3 apps is constant no matter what apps
Flipz explains that well. Autokiller is a great little app to adjust those settings. Used it for over two years now. I actually got to watch that app evolve. Great dev. Only works if you are rooted.
Shinigami20 said:
When you haven't used an app for a long time, Android automatically recycles all open activities from the app, except the root activity.
From geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/ (sorry I can't make a link yet)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sent from my iPhone with the bigger GeeBees.
Thanks for all the responses. I've tried to address them all:
Spare Parts - I installed this and set the Activity to Normal (it WAS set on aggressive). Unfortunately, this didn't help.
Press the Home key - Pressing the Home key and then going back to Angry Birds DOES work. It picks up right where you left off. Unfortunately, when the phone goes to sleep, it restarts Angry Birds on waking.
What do I see when I wake the phone - It goes to my WidgetLocker lock screen. Once unlocked, the very first thing that shows up is the Angry Birds "Rovio" loading screen. No home screen in between.
Any other thoughts are much appreciated! Is there any way to simply exempt Angry Birds from being closed by the system automatically? It seems like this should be possible!
Can you try something out for me? I want to give evidence to my theory.
Download another 3d game, load a level, then sleep the device. See if there's a lot of stuttering/reloading when you wake the device back up.
Any news on this? I got the same problem with CM 9.1 on my Doubleshot (aka M4GS). When I have like 10 tabs or so opened in Opera, Android kills the task. But not when I put it into sleep, but right when I'm browsing! That's really annoying since after restarting Opera I have to reopen every single tab manually from the history.
Already tried Spare Parts, but it doesn't offer some kinda whitelist for apps that shouldn't be autokilled.
It's really frustrating, Android's autokilling feature was one of the few things, that I didn't like about that OS when I switched from Windows Mobile to Android a few years ago. And I still hate that feature. Why can't I decide by myself which apps to be closed and which ones not? Give back the power to the user I say!
At least there HAS to be a solution to force Anddroid, not to kill a specified app (e.g. Opera) and kill all the other running apps instead. Any 3rd Party task killer has some kinda ignore list, so how could Android be tweaked to do the same?
Shani Ace said:
Any news on this? I got the same problem with CM 9.1 on my Doubleshot (aka M4GS). When I have like 10 tabs or so opened in Opera, Android kills the task. But not when I put it into sleep, but right when I'm browsing! That's really annoying since after restarting Opera I have to reopen every single tab manually from the history.
Already tried Spare Parts, but it doesn't offer some kinda whitelist for apps that shouldn't be autokilled.
It's really frustrating, Android's autokilling feature was one of the few things, that I didn't like about that OS when I switched from Windows Mobile to Android a few years ago. And I still hate that feature. Why can't I decide by myself which apps to be closed and which ones not? Give back the power to the user I say!
At least there HAS to be a solution to force Anddroid, not to kill a specified app (e.g. Opera) and kill all the other running apps instead. Any 3rd Party task killer has some kinda ignore list, so how could Android be tweaked to do the same?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree. I was downloading a file in Opera, switched to other apps, then went back to opera and it reopened.. Needless to say the download failed. This really sucks.
Use titanium and freeze the stock task manager (if any).
Android, by default, keeps only 3 (correct me if I'm wrong) applications' sessions in memory, but that's obviously no reason for it to kill angry birds right after the display is closed.
Try installing Minfree (I think it's available on the Play Store) to understand when and why Android is killing the application. It'll give you the parameters on which the Android Auto killer operates, but you will need ROOT to be able to edit them.
And no, there isn't a way to earmark an application such that it isn't killed, at least, not that I know of.
Hope this helps.
Haters gonna hate
potatoes gonna potate.
Check out v6 supercharger and all ur questions will be answered.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=991276
sent from my DNA
jbroses said:
I am new to Android - just got a Droid 3.
How do I stop the system from auto-killing a certain app? When I play Angry Birds, if the phone goes to sleep on timeout, when I turn it back on, the App has to re-load from scratch (rather than opening to where I left off last time). I'm assuming the system decided to kill it for lack of memory, but how do I STOP it from doing that (like an ignore list)?
Will I need a third party app?
Any help is appreciated!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi, excuse me for not reading other posts and replying directly but wanted to share something that works for me and does not kill certain launched apps. Open any app, then come out of the app and tap on recent apps button and you will see the apps that are currently launched. Depending on your OS and model, are you able to lock an app (by slightly dragging the app icon down and then tapping on the lock icon). I did that for one of the games and surprisingly even after several minutes, I was able to continue from exactly where I left off. Hope this helps. Let me know.
Screenshot: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Bs7dxj7t3o/VZHLFAF6fdI/AAAAAAABI0Q/WXFhUv1c2gw/s1600/IMG_0023.JPG
Hi all,
I just got my Transformer Prime this week, and as a new user both of Android (my phone is a WP7 device) and of tablets in general, I do have a couple of questions that maybe you guys can help me with...
1) Shut it down or not?
Being a tablet something in between my phone and my laptop, I'm still not sure exactly how to manage it. I know this will come with experience, but do you guys leave it always on like your phone or do you shut down like a laptop? I actually only hibernate my laptop, but I don't know how to do that on my TP... is it possible?
2) Services: my battery and OS responsiveness
OK, so I got my TP and started downloading apps... Skype and Facebook were one of the firsts. I quickly realized that, by default, after opening them for the 1st time, they kept giving me notifications, even if I swiped them left of the task manager (i.e. closed them, AFAIK). This is OK for Skype, but I really don't want Facebook bothering me that much, so I disabled notifications on its settings. Is that all that is needed to remove these permanent services? Does the "services" tab under Settings -> Applications really show everything that is running or can some apps hide from there?
3) Closing apps: should I care about it or not?
I still didn't fully understand how "closing apps" work on Android (ICS at least). If I have an app with notifications enabled (i.e. its service is enabled, right?), even if I close it from the task manager, the notifications keep coming. However, if notifications are disabled, is swiping them left from the task manager REALLY closing them? At the end of the day, to improve battery and responsiveness, should I keep closing my unused apps?
4) Launcher: Is ICS launcher the best for tablets?
This is actually part of a more general question, coming below. But anyway, I read that the ICS launcher is much improved from previous Android versions, and at the same time I didn't find a good launcher comparison for tablets only. Many of the launchers reviews only apply them for phones, and only compare them to the Gingerbread launcher (or some device-specific launcher). Since many of the launchers are paid apps, I would like to know: is there any launcher that is really worth trying in my new TP? What do you guys use?
5) Tablet-optimized apps???
I don't have my TP for even a week and I'm already tired of reading great things about an app, only to download it and see that it is not optimized for tablets at all. So, is there any good source of info/reviews on tablet-optimized apps?
Many thanks!
Leo.
1) Shut it down or not?
Personally, I always leave mine tablet running. There is a price to pay from a battery perspective when shutting down / starting up, so unless you know you are not going to be using it for an extended period of time, I would recommend leaving it on.
2) Services: my battery and OS responsiveness
I believe the 'Services' tab will show all the user app services that are running, but I am not sure if you can permanently prevent them from starting back up with ICS. I have seen task manager apps in the market that can prevent services from starting up. In all reality though, if you are concerned about background services draining your battery, the Prime has excellent battery life to begin with, especially if you have the dock, so if I was you I wouldn't get too worked up over the background services. Now if we were talking about a smart phone here (like my Thunderbolt for example which has horrible battery life), I would be much more concerned about this type of thing as I would want to do anything possible to squeeze as much life out of my battery just to get through an entire day.
3) Closing apps: should I care about it or not?
From my understanding swiping an app on the Recent Apps tray won't actually kill the process. Swiping an app from the Recent Apps tray more or less just removes the app from the list of Recent Apps. ICS automatically takes care of shutting down processes and releasing memory when appropriate. If you want to manually kill an app you can Force Close it from the list of apps from the Settings -> Applications menu. But again, my personal preference is to let ICS do its thing and take care of process management. I will remove apps from the Recent Apps tray just keep the tray less cluttered with apps that I don't use or need to switch to that often but I normally won't kill apps manually from the task manager.
On a side note, I would think removing an app from the Recent Apps tray would signal the OS that I am not going to be using the app again any time soon and the OS is free to shut down the process and release its memory, but I am not sure if this is what happens or not. All I know is that I have read elsewhere that removing an app from the Recent Apps tray will not immediately kill the process.
4) Launcher: Is ICS launcher the best for tablets?
Personally, I really like ICS so I haven't tried any of the other launchers that are out there (on the tablet side of things anyways). I used the GO Launcher on my phone for a little while but ended up switching back to the default HTC Sense launcher. This is one of the things I love about Android though; the ability to totally change the look and feel the device by simply customizing and switching between different launchers. If I ever get tired or bored with ICS, I can download a new launcher and just like that, everything will seem new and fresh again.
5) Tablet-optimized apps???
This is one of the big problems with Android and the Android Market right now; not just the small selection of tablet optimized apps but being able to find these apps in the Market. There is an 'editors top picks for tablet apps' section or something like that in the Android Market that I have used. Unfortunately, many of the apps in there are not that great, but at least they are optimized for tablets. Typically I will just do a google search for 'top android tablet apps' to get a feel for some of the best tablet optimized apps that are out there.
Try the Tablified website or app to find tablet optimized apps. Can't download directly from there, but the install link will take you to the market page for whatever app you want.
http://www.tablified.com
jordache16 said:
1) Shut it down or not?
Personally, I always leave mine tablet running. There is a price to pay from a battery perspective when shutting down / starting up, so unless you know you are not going to be using it for an extended period of time, I would recommend leaving it on.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
First of all, thanks for taking the time to reply me! Anyway, my point was exactly about the times when I will not use it for an extented period, like when I go to bed or something... But I guess since I don't want any notifications when I'm sleeping, I think it is wiser to shut it down. On the other hand, is there a quick-way to completely silence the tablet, i.e. turn off the volume AND the vibrations?
jordache16 said:
2) Services: my battery and OS responsiveness
I believe the 'Services' tab will show all the user app services that are running, but I am not sure if you can permanently prevent them from starting back up with ICS. I have seen task manager apps in the market that can prevent services from starting up. In all reality though, if you are concerned about background services draining your battery, the Prime has excellent battery life to begin with, especially if you have the dock, so if I was you I wouldn't get too worked up over the background services. Now if we were talking about a smart phone here (like my Thunderbolt for example which has horrible battery life), I would be much more concerned about this type of thing as I would want to do anything possible to squeeze as much life out of my battery just to get through an entire day.
3) Closing apps: should I care about it or not?
From my understanding swiping an app on the Recent Apps tray won't actually kill the process. Swiping an app from the Recent Apps tray more or less just removes the app from the list of Recent Apps. ICS automatically takes care of shutting down processes and releasing memory when appropriate. If you want to manually kill an app you can Force Close it from the list of apps from the Settings -> Applications menu. But again, my personal preference is to let ICS do its thing and take care of process management. I will remove apps from the Recent Apps tray just keep the tray less cluttered with apps that I don't use or need to switch to that often but I normally won't kill apps manually from the task manager.
On a side note, I would think removing an app from the Recent Apps tray would signal the OS that I am not going to be using the app again any time soon and the OS is free to shut down the process and release its memory, but I am not sure if this is what happens or not. All I know is that I have read elsewhere that removing an app from the Recent Apps tray will not immediately kill the process.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hum, ok, I will try to freak out less about open apps. What's still bugs me, for instance, is the behavior of Google Talk vs. Skype. After turning the tablet on, Skype doesn't open automatically, and after I open it, it will gracefully inform-me of its status on the notifications bar. However, today I just got surprised by a incoming IM from Google Talk, even if I did'nt open it! I realized that it is hidden under "Google Services" in the app list, but there is no setting in the app to disable it from running on start-up! I can only "sign out"... Anyway, on the other hand, there's no setting to have Skype launch automatically on start up...
jordache16 said:
4) Launcher: Is ICS launcher the best for tablets?
Personally, I really like ICS so I haven't tried any of the other launchers that are out there (on the tablet side of things anyways). I used the GO Launcher on my phone for a little while but ended up switching back to the default HTC Sense launcher. This is one of the things I love about Android though; the ability to totally change the look and feel the device by simply customizing and switching between different launchers. If I ever get tired or bored with ICS, I can download a new launcher and just like that, everything will seem new and fresh again.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll second that. I've quickly used the Iphone 4 a couple of times and its dullness just bores me to death... hehe
jordache16 said:
5) Tablet-optimized apps???
This is one of the big problems with Android and the Android Market right now; not just the small selection of tablet optimized apps but being able to find these apps in the Market. There is an 'editors top picks for tablet apps' section or something like that in the Android Market that I have used. Unfortunately, many of the apps in there are not that great, but at least they are optimized for tablets. Typically I will just do a google search for 'top android tablet apps' to get a feel for some of the best tablet optimized apps that are out there.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, I saw that, but I hate that I cannot filter that list between apps and games... stupid Google or stupid me? hehe
wikedawsum said:
Try the Tablified website or app to find tablet optimized apps. Can't download directly from there, but the install link will take you to the market page for whatever app you want.
http://www.tablified.com
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the tip! I'm cheking it out right now...
reguarding open apps
At times i noticed my stock launcher was laggy to switch between screens. After swiping to close the recent apps it was a lot more responsive, so i think that swiping the apps from the recent list does close them, at least in mose cases.
As to optimization apps, usually they are intended for phones running older software. You need to remember that every phone (aside from the google phones) is running a slightly different version of android.
Since each version of android is different, even between the Froyo on my phone and your phone, because they have different modifications on them there is a chance that the customized software on my phone may be better at handling unused tasks than your phone (in fact HTC phones by default have a LOT of running processes in the background, whereas Samsung phones generally have fewer).
A lot of these optimization apps do several things:
Turn off wifi and bluetooth when not needed
Close tasks when they are unused
lower screen brightness
turn off 3g and use 2g if available and not in a call
Now this may be excellent for your phone, it spends most of its time in your pocket, soon as you unlock it it can connect to wifi again, turn on bluetooth, etc.
HOWEVER!
If you have, say, the weather widget, or a clock, or in my case battery monitor pro, and the task killer is killing those tasks those widgets will no longer update.
Some tasks, like Maps, tend to start up automatically, meaning your wasting MORE battery life closing this app and then it restarts and you have to close it again. It takes less battery life having it run in the background.
Sometimes an app will close (like the browser) that your not fully done using. Theres a difference between the app being frozen in memory and fully closed. Both do not require much power, however when you open that process again the frozen one takes a LOT less battery than the unfrozen one.
On a tablet, having a case that has a magnet in the apropriate spot and, say, tasker (very good app for custimizing your own triggers to turn things on and off) to detect that sensor and shut off wifi, gps, bluetooth, etc. would be very cool. Many apps use the proximity sensor to detect if its in a pocket and shut off everything, or the lockscreen. Because the way a tablet is used many of these battery saver apps will actually use more battery than what would be used in the first place.
You also have to remember that as android advances there are more tweaks for battery life put into them. For instance, you can have ICS close tasks that are not being used right away to save memory and its pretty good about freezing things in background memory.
Older versions of android lacked these features, or they were poorly implimented. I remember on my vibrant i was always going back to make sure all my tasks were closed properly when i was done with them. With newer devices its not an issue android takes care of that for me.
TLDR: Try as many battery saver apps as you like, just be warey as to what devices they are designed for and what version of android they were made for. Doesnt mean they wont work, just means they may do something thats useless for using on a tablet.
1) Shut it down or not?
Never. We got the companion core for a reason.
2) Services: my battery and OS responsiveness
No, everything is shown except core processes. You can get systempanel if you want to see.
3) Closing apps: should I care about it or not?
Don't unless you somehow got froyo or eclair onto your tablet.
4) Launcher: Is ICS launcher the best for tablets?
Depends on your tastes. I would suggest trying all of them.
5) Tablet-optimized apps???
What the other people said.
1) Mine is always on. I shut down when I expect it to be idle for a long time or when I want maximum battery conservation while idle. Pressing the power button is as close as you get to hibernate, officially with Android. I'm interested to know if any of the usual Linux power management stuff applies to these systems or if it's tied to ACPI (A PC thing), and if there would be a way to wake the system. It's certainly not supported by ASUS .
2) Google how Android services work and about the application life cycle. For the most part things like Facebook don't do all that much harm, unless it is dealing with a lot of data. If you do not want it to run and the application lacks a setting for turning the service off, uninstall the app. A startup manager may or may not be able to help but be warned: auto task killers are generally bad, you would actually want to manage the startup services not auto kill them!
3) No. Android will take care of this OK. Closing apps generally refers to the "Activity" not the service. Android has taken decent care of that since at least version 2.2 and this tablet runs 4.0.3 . Swipping stuff out of the multi-task menu is most useful for keeping it tidy, it will not generally improve your life in most cases. For a good explanation you should look for a post Dianne Hackborn reshared on G+, I believe Android Police even carried it.
4) Depends on what is best for you. It's great except for the lack of customization. Nova Launcher offers a bit more. ICS's launcher versus e.g. GB's is almost what could be called a basic custom launcher, i.e. all the important stuff is there but you can't tweak the hell out of it. For more serious work try ADW Launcher Ex (scrolling widgets currently broken) or Go (not quite fully tablet optimized yet but works). I use ADW Launcher Ex, and there is a free version with less features.
5) Tablified Market and XDA usually helps I guess. I rarely have problems except with rarely updated stuff.
Sent from my Transformer Prime TF201 using Tapatalk
Hi Everyone,
Basically, I got my Samsung Galaxy Player 4.0 in January, and when it comes to the features, I have been loving it. This is my first Android device.
However, I have been having problems lately. First, some basic information: it's an 8gb device, and I have a 32gb class 10 microSD card in it. I have a huge number of apps on it (over 200), however, I keep careful tabs on what is running in the background, reporting an app if it runs in the background even when not needed and that will reopen if killed, and if I don't really need it, deleting it after a week. I've only had to do that with a couple of apps so far. As I use this a lot as a PDA (I don't have a phone, this basically covers those bases), I have a couple of things that always run in the background, which I want there (textplus, Linphone, MailDroid, SwipePad). After getting rid of the services that I don't need, I'm still looking at over 100MB free RAM. I'm still on the stock ROM, and I'm using GO launcher Ex. I reboot daily.
My problem is that it crashes often - sometimes daily. Usually, it will go something like this: An application freezes, the whole system becomes unresponsive, and I either have to reboot it by holding down the power button for 8 (?) seconds, or something snags and it reboots by itself. Usually the first sign is that the haptic feedback for the home button comes about a second later after I press it - except then it is almost always too late. The power button will usually turn the screen on or off, but the lockscreen won't appear, I'll see the screen as it was before, frozen. Sometimes, it eventually reboots, while sometimes it doesn't, making me hold down the power button to reboot it, and sometimes, just as it will start "becoming unfrozen" (it goes to the home screen and it starts loading), it will reboot.
It seems to be that after an approximate time of active use, it will crash. Before that, apps can freeze, FC, and within a few seconds, I'll be back on the home screen or in another app, doing something else. After that, on the other hand, it seems to me that whenever an app freezes or has a problem, it basically takes down the whole system with it.
Something tells me that this isn't just normal (otherwise Android wouldn't have over 50% of smart phone market share ), because I haven't heard of problems like this before, and other people with Android I know don't seem to be having the same problems (if any, at all). I have been reading around, and saw some thread about another phone describing similar problems, and it turns out it was a motherboard problem, so the phone was returned for warranty, except I don't remember where that was, I'm just hoping it's something like that...
OK, now that you've read my long post (sorry, I thought it would be best to give more details than get asked about them), I really hope this isn't something normal, because outside of this problem, I'm really enjoying all the possibilities, capabilities and flexibilities of Android (I'm looking at you, iPod). It's really quite aggravating, today I lost my public transit itinerary on Google Maps (I feature I love), and thankfully, I remembered enough to make it through, but it is quite frustrating. Please tell me this is not Android being Android?
Go Launcher is not Officially supported on these devices and swallows the small amount of ram very quickly, I tried it for a day and got rid of it because of how badly it impacted performance.
edit: looks like since I tried it they added support for our players, still won't run it, its to much of a system hog.
I don't know, but I tried switching to the default launcher, and it already crashed earlier than usual. Any other ideas? I'll try some other launchers over the next few days.
Sounds like you are running out of system resources. You say you have a couple hundred apps installed and I bet some of those are becoming active and hogging precious ram and cpu resources in the background until the system crashes. I have a 2 year old Samsung Captivate and I only have minimal amount of apps because it will often big down and become unresponsive and crash. So before you head out to a repair shop, remove some of your many apps and see if that helps.
So, if I understand, even if an app runs in the background for a short period of time, it still consumes resources, even after it's stopped running?
trainman261 said:
So, if I understand, even if an app runs in the background for a short period of time, it still consumes resources, even after it's stopped running?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you have a titanium backup freeze apps that run in backround and see what happens ..when you open programs they will stay in memory so use some memory kill widget to clean memory from time to time.I have a stock rom witch is not very good with memory menagment so sometimes when memory is full it just stop and only help is restarting ..so i use app "quick system info" which give you memory ajd cpy usage displayed in status bar and when memory is close 2 full i just click on that and it kill all other aps except what a use in that moment.
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA
So, basically, the ROM is to blame? As to Titanium backup, I think that needs root, and I'm not quite ready to root yet (I've done enough hacking on my iPod). I do plan on upgrading to android 4.0 eventually (once all the issues get fixed, this is my main device, after all), and I think I'm going to have to root it at that point, but I'll be able to test it on a different ROM then, as well as try freezing apps. For now, I've tried LauncherPro, which seems a lot more lightweight, and it seems to be making it through the day until I reboot, and seems to be very stable... it also loads my widgets lightnight fast, which is great.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it is:
obviously there are memory leaks, every OS has that
Android will not kill services, but only programs
If there are places where memory can be freed, Android will do that when necessary
If no memory can be freed, and there is barely any memory left, than a minor FC or a frozen app is all it will need to push Android off the cliff
Is this the way it works? And, then, when I upgrade to 4.0 (CM9), most of those problems should be gone (because of better memory management)?
I'm running OS 4.5.5 and my my performance slows Way down after about a day and a half. At first, I thought it may have been the launcher but I started using GQ launcher about a month ago and it still get sluggish. I ran Clean Master on it for a while so every time I shut it down, CA would clean up the RAM. This helped a little but it would still get sluggish after a few days. So I wound up removing it. The booster widget for GQ says my "normal" RAM usage is 70-80% which seems really high to me. The sluggishness starts when I get above 80%. After a reboot, I'm normally sitting around 45%. I'm not using any high performance apps. I mostly use my tablet for email, Facebook, and the like. Any ideas? I keep hoping OS 5 will get released and solve my problems.
Vc027708 said:
I'm running OS 4.5.5 and my my performance slows Way down after about a day and a half. At first, I thought it may have been the launcher but I started using GQ launcher about a month ago and it still get sluggish. I ran Clean Master on it for a while so every time I shut it down, CA would clean up the RAM. This helped a little but it would still get sluggish after a few days. So I wound up removing it. The booster widget for GQ says my "normal" RAM usage is 70-80% which seems really high to me. The sluggishness starts when I get above 80%. After a reboot, I'm normally sitting around 45%. I'm not using any high performance apps. I mostly use my tablet for email, Facebook, and the like. Any ideas? I keep hoping OS 5 will get released and solve my problems.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On higher end phones/tabs sluggish performance is typically due to excessive background tasks. Memory swapping is less of an issue due given the overall speed of the device. 70-80% (even 90%) memory utilization is not excessive as much of that reflects cached tasks that do not need to be reloaded from permanent storage when recalled. Android will swap them out (oldest first) if memory is needed.
Unfortunately, you can't see everything running on 4.5.5 as it can not be rooted. FireOS in general and Amazon apps in particular tend to launch multiple processes when you activate one app in a 'suite'. For example, launching the Amazon shopping app also starts Kindle reader, instant video, Amazon music and parental controls. Those apps continue to run in the background until the device is rebooted.
Snag a decent task manager and see if there is unneeded 'stuff' you can kill (note modt system tasks won't be displayed on FireOS). You might just stumble across the culprit.
Any suggestions for a task manager?
Vc027708 said:
Any suggestions for a task manager?
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Click to collapse
Well - Clean Master is popular, easy to use and has options to 'clean' memory on sleep and other events (this normally isn't necessary or advised except for diagnostic purposes). It will also reveal auto starts although you may not be able to stop them without root. Downside is a heavy dose of marketing and promos for other apps.
Other suggestions:
- CCleaner (simple and effective)
- ES Task Manager (time proven)
There are dozens available; everyone has their favorite. Be aware FireOS may restrict the operation of some functions. If you can not find what you want in the Amazon app store consider installing an alternative market place like 1Mobile which tries to emulate the Play Store. Just be careful what you download/install as it's not as well curated as the Amazon and Google stores.
It's possible you have a hardware issue; I tend to think not given it takes a day or two for the problem to fully manifest. Yet another option is to simply restart your device once a day. Doesn't address root cause but might be the easiest solution.
I downloaded especially task manager and it seems to be doing a good job. I haven't been able to track down a culprit for the sluggishness though. However I've been shutting down my kindle at night every few days. I have noticed something weird though. When I power down the kindle and then try to charge it, it comes back on immediately. Even when I have the power cord connected first and then power it down, it still comes back on. Is this normal? It seems awfully strange to me. And it obviously makes it take way longer to get a full charge
Vc027708 said:
I downloaded especially task manager and it seems to be doing a good job. I haven't been able to track down a culprit for the sluggishness though. However I've been shutting down my kindle at night every few days. I have noticed something weird though. When I power down the kindle and then try to charge it, it comes back on immediately. Even when I have the power cord connected first and then power it down, it still comes back on. Is this normal? It seems awfully strange to me. And it obviously makes it take way longer to get a full charge
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My HDX 7s behave the the same way. Not all android devices do; many will simply display charge status without fully booting. This has nothing to do with the rom that is installed as it is determined by lower level code.
There is no need to power down your device to charge. Simply put it to sleep. Charge time/rate will not be significantly impacted. When it's done charging you can initiate a reboot if desired to begin the day with a 'clean slate'. I realize this involves a few extra steps and a bit of time. Not ideal but have to work with the hand that has been delt.
If your device is waking while charging try placing it in airplane mode. Many apps will check network status and defer full wake-ups until connectivity is restore. The check is done with the screen off and consumes little power. I can't speak to the most recent FireOS framework; previous versions were relatively quite during sleep provided the device was in airplane mode. Note the built in function to disable WiFi while sleeping does not work reliably in my experience.
In my last post, I meant I had gotten ES Task Manager not especially task manager.
I've noticed lately the stock launcher seems to have a large cache associated with it. It's normally second to Silk or Facebook. However, I've been using GQ Launcher almost exclusively lately.
Just a few minutes ago, everything started slowing down so I opened Task Manager. The cache for Launcher (the stock Fire one) was almost 80Mb. It was second largest behind Silk which was 200Mb. As soon as I cleared the cache for the Launcher, performance returned to normal. I did not clear the cache for anything else. Any ideas on why the cache for the Launcher would be so large? Could I have something corrupted with OS 4.5.5 causing this on a regular basis?
Vc027708 said:
In my last post, I meant I had gotten ES Task Manager not especially task manager.
I've noticed lately the stock launcher seems to have a large cache associated with it. It's normally second to Silk or Facebook. However, I've been using GQ Launcher almost exclusively lately.
Just a few minutes ago, everything started slowing down so I opened Task Manager. The cache for Launcher (the stock Fire one) was almost 80Mb. It was second largest behind Silk which was 200Mb. As soon as I cleared the cache for the Launcher, performance returned to normal. I did not clear the cache for anything else. Any ideas on why the cache for the Launcher would be so large? Could I have something corrupted with OS 4.5.5 causing this on a regular basis?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
GO Launcher in general is just bloated with unnecessary features, ads, etc.
I would avoid task managers and cleaning apps (i.e. Clean Master), as they often do more harm than good.
Facebook apps are notorious for constantly running in the background and eating up battery life.
As alternatives, I'd highly recommend switching to some more lightweight apps:
Nova Launcher
If you really need to clean your app caches and the like, at least do it with SD Maid, which doesn't try to oversell what it does and isn't loaded with junk.
Metal for Facebook
EncryptedCurse said:
GO Launcher in general is just bloated with unnecessary features, ads, etc.
I would avoid task managers and cleaning apps (i.e. Clean Master), as they often do more harm than good.
Facebook apps are notorious for constantly running in the background and eating up battery life.
As alternatives, I'd highly recommend switching to some more lightweight apps:
Nova Launcher
If you really need to clean your app caches and the like, at least do it with SD Maid, which doesn't try to oversell what it does and isn't loaded with junk.
Metal for Facebook
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Concur with Nova (excellent!) and SD Maid recommendations. Clean Master is obnoxiously bloated and self boasting but core functionality is solid with an easy to digest UI. Task managers can be good diagnostic tools but generally aren't needed once the culprits have been identified. In general never enable any of the automated cleaning functions unless you can configure to target a specific app vs the entire portfolio of active/cached tasks.
As I recall your device isn't rooted (4th gen) so you are stuck with the stock FireOS launcher. Occasionally dumping the cache may be your best option.
Started using Nova about a week ago. It seems when I use only Nova, everything runs great. However, if for some reason I open the native Launcher, everything gets sluggish a few hours later. It sure would be nice if I could set it as the default. Right now I have to choose every time I hit the home button. Thanks for all the help
Vc027708 said:
Started using Nova about a week ago. It seems when I use only Nova, everything runs great. However, if for some reason I open the native Launcher, everything gets sluggish a few hours later. It sure would be nice if I could set it as the default. Right now I have to choose every time I hit the home button. Thanks for all the help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not aware of a method for permanently selecting a non-stock launcher on FireOS v4 without root which itself is not an option on a 4th gen HDX. Might be a way via adb but the risk is high without a way to recover if something goes wrong.
Vc027708 said:
Started using Nova about a week ago. It seems when I use only Nova, everything runs great. However, if for some reason I open the native Launcher, everything gets sluggish a few hours later. It sure would be nice if I could set it as the default. Right now I have to choose every time I hit the home button. Thanks for all the help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try this in adb:
Code:
adb shell
pm block com.amazon.kindle.otter