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Task killer apps " THE TRUTH"

I'm not saying it saved my battery. I'm just saying I didn't even use it today (to kill apps, and in theory, save battery) and I had the best battery life I've seen yet. People seem to think killing open apps will save their battery, when in fact it doesn't matter. Android manages processes and memory just fine by itself.

It depends, if you killed some apps consume a lot of your battery. It will save your battery.
 
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Correct. I was more or less referring to the memory that open apps use, not so much the radios. Leaving an app open that leaves the GPS/Wifi/BlueTooth radio on will definitely drain the battery.
Yes, I totally agree with you. Wifi is the number one feature consume battery, then GPS, Blue, screen... Google's IO 2009 discussed this topic.
 

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I use, and will continue to use, ATK. The large majority of the apps that I regularly run are on my "ignore list"; there are really two kinds of apps that I kill: ones that I basically never run (e.g. Shazam, ShopSavvy--no point in them lingering if I won't use them again for two weeks) and ones that will GPS-pwn my battery life if I forget about them (e.g. Maps, WeatherBug Elite--I want them to have GPS capabilities without micromanaging their settings, so I just leave it on and kill them as necessary).

Does it bother me that Corporate Calender (huh?) and Visual VM are running in the background someplace? No. I mean, I consider it a tad annoying, but I don't think it hinders the phone in any fashion. So I ignore them, and that's that.

In any event, I really do think that there's a middle ground here. As Ainvar said, use & enjoy your device as you please.


Side notes:

1. ATK used to be a battery-consuming culprit for me (i.e., it was at around 2% of the battery used after a recharge). After I stopped running its task bar widget, though, that completely disappeared (now I just have an app link on the home screen).

2. Anybody notice that the Locale process ("LocaleService") shows up in the device's running services list but not in the ATK task list? What's that about?
 
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I think a distinction needs to be made between some of these apps that we seem to be grouping together.

Some apps (atk, I believe) monitor device and system usage and automatically kill processes. I can see why this would be a problem if not properly set up. It needs to be monitoring all the time, and as standard, will kill apps arbitrarily.

Other apps (taskiller) are just a quick press of an icon to kill processes/apps when you feel it's needed. You can set it up to ignore certain things if you wish, but again, you need to set it up properly.

Lets just make sure we're all talking about the same thing here - and that we want the same results from it.

If I've had a heavy days usage, and then I try to play android golf (for example) it *sometimes* stutters and the sound stammers a bit. I come out of it, hit the taskiller icon and all is well again. I use it when I need to, and it's just one click. I have it set up to ignore twidroid, sense and a few other things I want left alone.
 
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I think a distinction needs to be made between some of these apps that we seem to be grouping together.

Some apps (atk, I believe) monitor device and system usage and automatically kill processes. I can see why this would be a problem if not properly set up. It needs to be monitoring all the time, and as standard, will kill apps arbitrarily.

Other apps (taskiller) are just a quick press of an icon to kill processes/apps when you feel it's needed. You can set it up to ignore certain things if you wish, but again, you need to set it up properly.

Lets just make sure we're all talking about the same thing here - and that we want the same results from it.

If I've had a heavy days usage, and then I try to play android golf (for example) it *sometimes* stutters and the sound stammers a bit. I come out of it, hit the taskiller icon and all is well again. I use it when I need to, and it's just one click. I have it set up to ignore twidroid, sense and a few other things I want left alone.

Right--it's the constant monitoring of ATK's "taskbar widget" that gets you in trouble in terms of system usage. It displays all non-ignored tasks and refreshes every 30 seconds. (Although I think you're slightly mistaken--ATK and TasKiller are actually the same app; the former is "Advanced TasKiller," the pay version.)

If you're running TasKiller in such a way that it's single-click, that means you've got the 1x1 widget running... I'm sure that's better than the 3x1 widget (1x1 doesn't display the task icons or, as far as I know, do the 30 sec. refresh), but I prefer to just have a shortcut to the app itself on my homescreen. It means I'm two clicks away from a kill, but it also kills itself--so there's no monitoring until you open it, and all ATK-related processes are shut down once you do the kill. If you're super usage-conscious, that's the way to go.

Edit: I really should stress that everything's better without any task-managing widgets/apps actually running. When I made the change and began opening the ATK app from scratch, everything got zippier.
 
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I read a lot of people saying that because Android is based on Linux (the kernel at least) it handles multi tasking much better than Windows and that is why you don't need a task killer.

This is actually not the reason. Android will run programs in the background, but when it runs out of resources it will close running applications automatically (that's something linux and windows do not). This can lead to issues as when you come back to a closed application, the user will expect the application to be in the state in which he or she left it. To overcome this, Android applications store their state. When they are started again, the state is loaded and it appears the application was running all the time.

The only reason to close applications is to limit CPU usage. Applications can respond to all kinds of events and if you don't need them, you can close them. This may make a bit of a difference.
 
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I wish I would've read this thread prior to killing tasks on a regular basis....

I understand 100% now why it is not necessary to babysit tasks running in the background; however, I think I might have affected the youtube app by killing it too often. When I open the youtube app there are no videos available. I can still use youtube through my broswer, but the app allowed me to upload videos, which is a plus for me.

has this happened to anyone else? any tips?
 
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so, I won't claim to know everything about this subject. I'm no expert on the memory usage, or battery drain of apps on android/winmo/iPhone/whatever. This is what I do know. I was running ATK, and just a little while ago my battery was at 40%. I read this thread and decided to remove it and see if there was any difference. I rebooted, and my battery is at 60%.


can anyone explain that to me?
 
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i didn't read every page of this thread but i read enough to get a general consensus, and that consensus seems to be that the phone runs better without the app killer. i cant say whether mine does or not, but i noticed my battery last ALOT longer when i use the app killer once or twice during the day. my battery would die before i could leave work before i installed it. so the system may be strong enough to run everything without killing apps, but the battery suffers when you have a million apps open in the background. my question is this; is there a way to extend battery life WITHOUT app killer on your phone? i'd remove it but right now i'd rather have a longer battery life than a faster phone. anyone else notice the same thing i noticed regarding app killer and battery life?
 
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Me ...
13 month G1 Android user

G1 ...
Rooted for about 6 months
Firmware 1.6 and some 2.0 parts
Mod CyanogenMod 4.2.5

SD Card...
Total Space 1.01 G
Aval. 470 mb
125+ apps

SD Card secondary...
Total Space 870 mb
Aval. 643 mb

Internal Phone Storage...
Available space 51.52 mb

I consider myself a normal average user, I don't make a lot of phone calls, I surf the web a lot, I use streaming video/audio apps a lot and send many many many text messages a day.

If I don't plug in my phone, I get about 8 hours of use before battery level drops to 20% and I get a warning to recharge. After a full day of use my "internal storage' will drop to around 40 mb.


I did a 2 week test of using "task killer". Nothing changed. Battery use was the same. Internal memory was the same. I don't have exact numbers but I was getting same use out of phone.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Want your phone to run faster ?
Yeah we all do, now heres how to do it.

menu-settings-applications-manage applications

Scroll through the apps and "clear cache' of all the ones that have it. Here is a list of ones on my phone.

Backgrounds
Browser
Cestos
Fmylife
Get Fuzzy
Layer
Market
My Coupons
Recovery Flasher
TV.com
Youtube

This will give you more internal memory and make our device run faster. People without apps2sd should do this often as their space is even more limited.

Also reduce the number of "widgets" you have running. They use up memory.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Want to lower your battery usage ?

Heck yeah !!!!!!!

Turn your screen brightness down.
Reduce number of "widgets" running.
Use "only 2G".
Turn off GPS when not using it.
Use wifi if available and shut it off if not.
Use headphones whenever possible the speaker uses more battery.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

If you don't believe me, no big deal. Give it a shot yourself you will notice a difference.
 
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my 6 y.o. has a theory that a battery left alone will recharge itself, obviously she was right....works for her DS, and your phone....werd.

i've found this as well. might have something to do with the fact that as temperature increases, battery voltage decreases.

ex. using the device, battery temp is 100 deg F. Battery voltage drops and reported voltage is lower. Leave it alone for a while and the device cools down to ambient, is started again, and shows a higher state of charge because the voltage is higher since it's cooler.
 
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