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Help Why are SO many applications always running?

dak244

Member
Nov 3, 2009
53
0
Hello All,

I just picked up the DROID today and have been reading the forums for the past 2 1/2 weeks.

Anyway, the first thing I did was download Advanced Task Killer (Free) in order to manage battery life and the one thing I noticed right off the bat is that SOO many applications are running at any given time, most of which I didn't even start up!

For example, I went in and killed all except ATK and the phone locked its self up. When I turned it back on, it was running Alarm Clock, Corporate Calendar, Visual VM, etc.

I didn't do anything to start these. Anyone have an idea?
 
Hello All,

I just picked up the DROID today and have been reading the forums for the past 2 1/2 weeks.

Anyway, the first thing I did was download Advanced Task Killer (Free) in order to manage battery life and the one thing I noticed right off the bat is that SOO many applications are running at any given time, most of which I didn't even start up!

For example, I went in and killed all except ATK and the phone locked its self up. When I turned it back on, it was running Alarm Clock, Corporate Calendar, Visual VM, etc.

I didn't do anything to start these. Anyone have an idea?

Probably just a lot of things running passively so they're able to activate quickly when needed. I doubt Alarm Clock, Visual VM, etc take too much memory. Unless your phone is running very slow, I wouldn't worry too much about them.
 
Upvote 0
Hello All,

I just picked up the DROID today and have been reading the forums for the past 2 1/2 weeks.

Anyway, the first thing I did was download Advanced Task Killer (Free) in order to manage battery life and the one thing I noticed right off the bat is that SOO many applications are running at any given time, most of which I didn't even start up!

For example, I went in and killed all except ATK and the phone locked its self up. When I turned it back on, it was running Alarm Clock, Corporate Calendar, Visual VM, etc.

I didn't do anything to start these. Anyone have an idea?

Apps run in different modes. Some apps run in the background as a "service" rather than as a full app. The alarm clock and visual voicemail most likely HAVE to run as a service in the background so that they work properly. If you're using the alarm, if you kill it, then the alarm won't sound on time. You may not get your voicemail notifications if you turn off that service as well.

Widgets often run as a service in the background so that they can update.


It's really up to the developer as far as what runs in the background. Some give you a bit of control, but it's not consistent. Android is designed to manage programs for you, shutting down apps when they aren't being used.
It's not foolproof because some devs don't know how to be conservative with resources.
 
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Apps run in different modes. [...]
It's not foolproof because some devs don't know how to be conservative with resources.

That's fine and dandy but I just performed a factory reset and there were already 3 apps running that really didn't need to be. The browser, voice dialer & corporate email. I haven't run the browser since the reset and I've have never used the voice dialer or corporate email (it's not configured).

The reason I installed the app manager to begin with is that my phone was slowing down after a week of use. When it first ran it showed 15+ apps with around 40MB of free memory. I killed them all and it showed immediate improvements.

Whenever I reset the phone it goes back to around 112MB free and slowly drops over time.

I am now down to nearly 100% stock apps except the task manager, 2 games and MyBackup. I will report back in a few days either way.

The reason I decided on the reset was that my phone was starting to become unresponsive, yet again. While trying to DL a backup program from the market it was taking several seconds to respond to keys pressed on the virtual keyboard.
 
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