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Task killer apps " THE TRUTH"

This is by no means an absolute truth, but I'm curious if anyone else has seen this?

Thanks.

Thanks for starting this thread. I gained so much information here. The task killer apps are touted on many websites as important apps. I uninstalled it last night and my battery has lasted all day. Usually I am charging it after 5-7 hours. Today I am working on 13 hours plus. Thanks to all who have given information here.
 
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I must say, i havent used taskiller for the past 2 days, and battery is lasting me al day and the phone is not running sluggish at all. i think i might delete it after all. The only problem is that i used the gps today and then i check battery status and even though i was done with it, it was using 40% of the battery because i couldnt close it
 
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Well coming form wm and bb I have been using the atk and did notice some force close issues but wasnt sure if they were the download apps or what, but decided to uninstall it and do a batt pull, to my surprise when the phone booted up wam! right away i get my facebook notify about email! and that never worked before with atk (and yes facebook was in the exclude list) so im on the fence some but am leaning more towards not using it things are looking smoother already....
 
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The only problem is that i used the gps today and then i check battery status and even though i was done with it, it was using 40% of the battery because i couldnt close it

Are you saying you couldnt shut down the GPS ? Why not ?

Menu-settings-security/locationenable/disable GPS

Or

Find a widget on the market that you can put on your home screen and just click it when you need to turn GPS on and off.
 
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Are you saying you couldnt shut down the GPS ? Why not ?

Menu-settings-security/locationenable/disable GPS

Or

Find a widget on the market that you can put on your home screen and just click it when you need to turn GPS on and off.

I did. I have my power widget on the screen and i turned it off. I've had the phone for about a month and 1/2 now and have taken all this classes on it. That's my job to mess with everything and see what happens. Before people start asking me how i got it a month before it came out, i work for Verizon ;)

back to the quote:

I had to run multiple tasks so andrew would kill the Maps running in the background, i miss taskiller though, im not gonna lie, its driving me crazy since im a closing tasks freak!!!
 
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I think there are different reasons for needing task killing/managing apps than just "how many can my phone handle at a time". Each one is based on how and where you use your phone.

I am actually running a different task program called Advanced Task Manager. I also run this in conjuntion with 2 other apps called Locale and Power Manager.

For me these are all essential. None seem to have any effect on the speed of my Driod phone but all 3 are key in keeping it running smoothly and keeping my battery from prematurely discharging.

I assure you this is true but not for the reasons everyone will assume. The tasks weren't klling my my battery. My office was. My office is almost 20 feet underground. I can barely get any cell signal at all and I do not have a wireless access point nearby.

If my WiFi is turned on it will kill my battery quick while looking for networks to sync with. My phone reception is good enough that I eventually get my e-mails and get some part of my phone calls and can make it through the day on a single charge as long as I don't have the GPS or WiFi enabled.

My Advanced Task Manager program has an auto-kill adjustible timer and the option to create exceptions. This way every 30 minutes ATM kills any app that is not in the exception list. This ensures that I still get my e-mails, phone calls, calendar updates, etc. but turns off everything else. This ensures there are no apps running that might turn on my GPS or WiFi or Bluetooth.

Locale automatically turns on/off apps based on battery status, calendar date, contact, location and time. I use this to automatically turn on my Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS during the hours that I am out of my office. This way the only time these are running they actually have something to connect to and aren't just killing the battery.

Lastly, I run Power Manager (free) to have a widget that I can toggle Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync, and Brightness from one of my hompages in case I need these during the normal "off" hours.

The main reason I chose these 3 specifically was not because apps were killing my battery or making things run slow, but apps were actually killing apps. There are just as many good apps out there as bad apps. I do not intend to run every single one I want to try through the ringer. I had problems with multiple apps trying to use the GPS and my navigator wouldn't connect. If I kill all of the other GPS apps or power cycle the phone it works fine. (Or if they were never running in the first place then I wouldn't have this problem.) So by shutting down apps I am not using every 30 minutes I avoid a lot of program conflicts. This also makes less than perfect apps work just fine for the few minutes I need them. And in the meantime the apps I need to have running at all times keep going strong.

Before I got this balanced my battery life was terrible and the first week I had my phone I had to pull the battery out once and power cycle it at least 7 or 8 times. Since I have gotten this set-up I haven't had to do either and my battery is typically at 50-75% by the time I get home late at night. (Even though it was syncing all day while 20 feet underground.)

Hope this is helpful to someone. Just wanted to put my own spin on uses for task killers and power management.

Nice forum you guys have here.:D
 
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Well 24 hrs without and yes I understand the not needing as well as the needing a task killer, just posting my results for a day
uninstalled last night about this time and since then I have used the phone as much the same as day before, result is after heavy use, changing wallpaer maps appstore internet etc I did have the phone reset 3 times today last one just before posting this. after i noticed it slow down... so my opinion at this time is maybe they are not needed for some users but others that maybe mess with the phone repeatedly it will help out by closing apps out.
I also was checking avail mem in running services and all day had no more than 23-28mb
with using atk I have 55-70 free at any given time,
I am using advance task killer free, no auto close settings, no taskbar icon and just ignore reg apps like mail, messaging, gmail
So I will just use it to close things after I power use the device and see what happens
 
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I am shocked no one is bringing up the biggest point. Using atk will make Droid slower with worse battery life as it runs in background, however if you open atk and go to settings, turn off auto start, then it will only Run/ use battery when started manually. Using it like this once or twice a day is beneficial. Running it in background is detrimental.
 
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Although I agree with there not being a need to always be closing apps to free memory (any more than there is a need to trim the registry in Windows Vista / 7 or clear memory in the same OSs) I have to keep my ATM around for now.

I am new to smart phones, and with the AM I am like a kid in a candy factory - and there is now way I have had time to check out all 100 apps I have installed - but I have been installing them in groups, like I should not be doing (I know, I know) and yesterday I ran into an issue (that I now have a theory about) that cause my phone to temporarily lock up multiple times. Without ATM, I'd be stuck waiting....and waiting...and waiting.... (which is what I did the first time - it took my phone almost 5 minutes to become sluggishly responsive).

The next time it happened, I managed to get to ATM which was already running and inside of 30 seconds had a responding phone.

I guarantee that you can reach a limit to the number of apps / data that it can access at any given moment, so I keep it around.

However, I am not one of those people who constantly tries to free up my memory in Windows either. Just as an example, I have 102 processes running on my desktop home computer - with lots of stuff starting up automatically and running in the system tray.

I know it is not a necessary thing for me to habitually do - but it still helps to have it there when you need it most....and that is to kill active processes that are sucking the life out of your phone.

Then again, I am not the average run of the mill computer user - so, hopefully, soon I won't be the average DROID user either.
 
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Thanks for this thread and the posts...very informative. Had my Droid for just a few days, have seen numerous articles out there that said ATK was a must-have. I installed it and was closing all these things I had no idea were even opened. At the same time...my email account started crashing and notifications stopped happening, along with a few other buggy things.

So...I had ATK installed but really didn't know what I was doing using it and may have messed up some functionality.

My battery life has been improving anyway with the first few days of charge/discharge cycles and little tweaks as I learn the device better - biggest one I think was dimming the display pretty low which works just fine for me but is a lot less bright than what it was doing on its own. I have uninstalled ATK and will see what happens.
 
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Good thread, I think you are on to something.

Battery Life
Battery Life is a major problem for a lot of people. I think it comes in 4 different packages:

1: Battery : Do you drain the battery to zero or never let it drain down

completely ? I do not know the definitive answer. It depends

on who you believe and personal experience. I have not tried to

drain the battery yet.

2. Charger : Many people who have bought after market chargers have had

interesting experiences from auto phone calls and emails made in

sleep time to discharging while plugged in etc. I have several

after market chargers, some work and some do not.

3. Killer Apps : I believe they are helpful although they also drain battery.

Some people feel that the LINUX system auto shuts down

unused programs. I am not sure.

I think TasKiller and Adv Task Killer work but use more battery.

I personally use Adv Task Manager and find it works well for me

4. Usage : Of course the biggest drain is usage. Any battery no matter how

good will drain with heavy usage. i.e. game playing, listening to

music, gps, bluetooth, wifi etc. The main drain is how long is the

screen on.

Conclusions: 1. Battery: defective ? Replace. Drain or not drain ???

2. Charger: defective ? Dispose

3. Killer apps: Do you need them ? I like Adv Task Management

4. Usage: Review usage in Settings/ App - Spare Parts

Modify especially in areas of low coverage. A lot of

the programs kick in automatically and if your

coverage is not good it continues to search and

uses battery. That is what the Killer apps do.

Let me know if there other thoughts on the matter.



Originally Posted by sooper_droid12
Lithium ion batteries should never be allowed to discharge or reach a low level of charge and then fully charged (i.e. full cycle charges). A friend of mine has his mind set on the fact that you need to fully discharge a battery and charge it to full to maintain its longevity. The opposite though is true: 1) Each battery has a finite number of charge/discharge cycles so no matter what, every batterywill eventually decline and die (i.e. these batteries do not have memory); 2) Several partial discharges with frequent recharges are favorable over one deep one; 3) Since our batteries are being measured by a gauge, 1 full discharge in 30 will keep the battery's circuitry calibrated with the gauge.

These are just some tips. Again, no battery is going to last forever and typical life for Li-ion batteries are 2-3 years. And don't bother getting a spare battery, unless you're one of those users who just blasts through batteries.
Agreed, I always have people telling me to discharge fully, don't overcharge, etc... and I always have to go on with this story.

The batteries that benefit from this type of charging and discharging are NiCd and NiMH cells; which were once very popular until lithium-ion technology came along. Lithium-ion does not have this "memory" effect and does not benefit from fully discharging, conversely, it looses capacity in these discharges.

Lithium-ion (or lithium-ion polymer) degrades based on the amount of "charging cycles" that it undergoes; each full charge (0->100%) counts as one full cycle. So, as sooper said partial discharges are more favorable over full discharges as they only count as a fraction of a full charge cycle.

As for the charging overnight, modern charges, phones, and batteries all include circuitry to prevent thebattery from being overcharged. You should be fine leaving it plugged in overnight.
 
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I noticed the same trend on the Hero when I had it. The task killer app seemed to cause more problems than solve. I notice in Android 2.0 you can monitor better the apps that are running anyway and even can see what is draining your battery on the droid.

Use the auto brightness (although not as bright and "pretty), it will help battery life.
 
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It really sounds like to me that some people are killing the wrong apps! People not getting email notifications are obviously killing either the gmail or email app! I've ignored things like this and I get all the notifications im supposed to......

But I did just uninstall ATK. I want to see if it makes a difference or not. I have kept Task Panel though........

Thanks everyone for all the great info!!
 
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In the market, I can see:

advanced task killer $4.99 by ReChild
Advanced Task Killer Free by ReChild
Taskiller Free by Thibaut Nicolas

I use the last one in the list.

Right. TasKiller is a different program. It doesn't run until you open it. I have read through this thread and it's got a lot of conflicting information, but I think I've found my conclusion. I definitely have noticed a few instances where I've started a more resource intensive app to see it not running smoothly, backed out and ran TasKiller, re-opened it and noticed a difference. Yes, this could be due to a bad app, so I'll look into that. I'm a 9 year Linux desktop user and can attest to the fact that linux doesn't do things much differently than Windows in this regard and can still get bogged down when too many programs are open. You shouldn't want to get to the point of using swap, though at least my Droid's swap is on SSD instead of a hard disk so it's not going to be quite as slow. Having said that, there are benifits to leaving apps in the background in that they will open quicker the next time you use them or even be in the same state as the last time it was used.

I think my practices will change in that I will only run TasKiller when I visibly notice a slowdown, but I will grab a system app that will let me check to see what possibly flawed program might be sucking up memory. I'm not going to uninstall TasKiller because it seems unlike ATK it doesn't run unless I tell it to run (then kills it's self afterwards) or I have the widget running (which I don't), so uninstalling the program isn't going to change anything.
 
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Appreciated this thoughtful thread. Have used TasKiller and it was OK, but I think Adv Task Manager is better. Would definitely stay away from
Adv Task Killer, a real battery drainer, for me anyway.

I believe battery consumption/life is determined by local 3G coverage and usage.
(see earlier post by dochavoc in this thread)

In other words, if you are lucky to live in a good area coverage, the phone does not spend a lot of time "searching" for your phone with the auto programs like bluetooth, gps and wifi.

If you live in a rural setting or are in a poor reception area, manually shut down all unnecessary programs and use something like TasKiller or ATM frequently to conserve battery.
 
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Just jumping on the Taskiller bandwagon. I only ever kill apps when I actually start seeing performance degradation. After killing a couple rogue apps, everything is snappy again.

I'd imagine having something like ATK is a bit like the RAM "freeing" apps on Windows. They spend more cycles unnecessarily purging stuff from memory than the rest of your apps do legitimately idling.

The real question is: is it up to the software authors, the users, or the OS to determine how to properly maintain a responsive system?
 
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The real question is: is it up to the software authors, the users, or the OS to determine how to properly maintain a responsive system?

the way i understand it, when the OS needs to stop an application to free up memory, it sends a stop command to the program (signal 9 and 15 are the two big ones, based on information higher up in this thread). it's up to the developers to respond to that command and properly end itself, etc.

but, that information is compiled from various threads. i'm not familiar with the full nuts and bolts of the android OS yet. most of my info is from this thread:

Android WILL shut down apps (as I explained above in detail) when it needs to in order to reclaim resources so that the top app (foreground) might have resources to do something with. Even if the foreground app doesn't need them, Android will kill apps if need be as necessary. As I said above, even tho it actually shuts the app down, it goes thru steps to allow an app to cleanly shut down AND recover from the shutdown as if it was never shut down. The app developer just has to write the code correctly to handle this situation.
from PLEASE READ: Do NOT worry about Apps running in the Background - Page 3 - Droid Forum - Verizon Droid & the Motorola Droid Forum
 
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you do not need any task killer...all you need is the power control widget that comes with the phone. keep all those things turned off when your not using them, if you still have a batt. problem you probably installed a poorly written app.

that is the main thing - anyone can make an app for these phones. it only takes one poorly written fart sound board (or whatever) app to drain your batt. in a matter of hours, send you phone into a boot cycle, or numerous other things. you have to read comments and use the star rating to determine if it is something you really want on your phone. also before you install an app it gives you a list of resources that app will have full access to...if you are d/ling a fart sound board and it wants full phone/network access you probably wouldn't want to d/l that

and if you really need something to kill processes and whatnot...get Astro file manager it has a task killer (that only kills when you tell it to), app manager/backup, and is one of the best file managers out all in one app
 
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Okay, I just got my phone yesterday. It has the ATK which I was wondering WTF it was for to begin with. My browser is somewhat sluggish at times and I think I somehow ended up with like 3 windows trying to run while I was attempting to figure it out. I also have noted Pandora on my unit. PAndora is mentioned here, but what is it exactly and what purpose does it serve?Thx!
zephyr (newbie in training) LOL
 
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