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Advanced Task Killer was Killing my Battery

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andrewzpsu

Well-Known Member
Nov 6, 2009
165
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So I've been doing some comparisons with these battery troubles I've been having. Doing one thing at a time to resolve them I've come to the conclusion that advanced task killer was in fact draining my battery one way or another.

Monday
Unplug at 8 am. It took 2 hours and two (2) 1 minute phone calls and my phone was at 79%. By 5 hours and 40 minutes it was at 31% - this was with the addition of 6 text messages sent and 6 received.

Traded out the battery

Tuesday:
Unplug at 8:15 am. 49 minutes later I was at 91% battery life. Basically following EXACTLY the power loss that I was getting with the other battery.

I uninstalled the Advanced Task Killer and noted that linear drop in battery level stopped - virtually flat lining at 90% for


Wednesday:
Unplug at 9:00 am. 52 minutes and 6 text messages later still at 100%.
UPDATE: 1:45 PM. (4 hours and 45 minutes into it) After lots of text messaging, maybe 10 minutes on radio, and probably 5 phone calls ... from the same insurance saleswoman... the phone is at 80%. At this rate the phone should last almost 24 hours with this use. SWEET.




And I was using the Advanced Task Killer to kill itself too.



Also - not everyone seems to have this problem but I will tell you all right now my phone does a hell of a lot better without any kind of task/app killer than with it.


Hope this helps some of you with battery trouble like I had.
 
Wow, thanks for the heads up. Are you using any other method for closing idle programs?

I am not using any other method.

In fact I let my phone totally die yesterday so I imagine that footprints and all those weird things are running in the background... or idling in the background. And my power level is holding at least 3-4 times as good as the days before still. And this bitch keeps calling me lol
 
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Very interesting! My battery life would not last more than five hours when I first got it. So I installed Task killer ASAP the next day and have not seen any improvement. I will give this a try and see if I get the same results. Can you tell me if either of you have any Social apps (twitter, FB) running in the background?
 
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Very interesting! My battery life would not last more than five hours when I first got it. So I installed Task killer ASAP the next day and have not seen any improvement. I will give this a try and see if I get the same results. Can you tell me if either of you have any Social apps (twitter, FB) running in the background?

I have a facebook app. I imagine it is running in the background. I do not use the facebook widget as I feel it is pretty stupid. I also have facebook integrated into my contacts too so its imported most of their birthdays and pictures - but I have it set to only update every 24 hours as a precaution.
 
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Thanks Andrew. I'm interested to see what you find with Manager (by Arron La - there are a few on the Market so I wanted to be clear on the one I'm using).

I'm using the "other than stock message app" fix, but due to the relatively new nature of the phone the battery has not been fully "seasoned" yet and I only have one days usage of the Manager my results will probably change.

Yesterday the phone went from 6:30a until 10:30p before the battery died. Some texting, some calls, a lot of web activity and "playing around" with settings, etc.
 
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Any updates on task managers or certain ones drainign the battery? I'm using the free adavanced task killer.
I've also read posts where people are using nothing, letting apps keep running and getting much better battery life...?
Tonight will be my 3rd day in a row of letting it die and then full charge. Then just charge whenever or?
I am likely to get around 12 hours today with very minimal useage, needs to be around 14-16 for me to be fairly happy with that portion.
 
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Any updates on task managers or certain ones drainign the battery? I'm using the free adavanced task killer.
I've also read posts where people are using nothing, letting apps keep running and getting much better battery life...?
Tonight will be my 3rd day in a row of letting it die and then full charge. Then just charge whenever or?
I am likely to get around 12 hours today with very minimal useage, needs to be around 14-16 for me to be fairly happy with that portion.

I have used advanced task manager. I find that it really isn't helping my battery life and I'll probably uninstall it.
 
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Another way to see the battery info is to open the voice dialer (I press and hold the green phone button to activate this) then say 'battery level'. It will give you an option of viewing the info.

UDB, without using some sort of an app, I'm not aware of any way to close running programs. Which is so far the only major flaw that I've found with the phone.
 
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Another way to see the battery info is to open the voice dialer (I press and hold the green phone button to activate this) then say 'battery level'. It will give you an option of viewing the info.

UDB, without using some sort of an app, I'm not aware of any way to close running programs. Which is so far the only major flaw that I've found with the phone.

Why is it a flaw? Don't you think the phone might be smart enough to manage it on it's own? ;)
 
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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. (read below)

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 battery will 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 the battery from being overcharged. You should be fine leaving it plugged in overnight.
 
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LOL - Oh I think the SHOULD be smart enough, but ARE they really??

Actually I'm the same way about my computers, I just don't see the need for a bunch of stuff running in the background if there is no particular reason for it. I don't use Footprints or many of those other apps that run when the phone start ups. And I don't think every program I ever started should just hang out there and run. While I suspect most of them don't actually use much battery sitting there in the background, I just don't think they should run unless I start them.

Of course, that could just be me. :)

I guess if the app killers are draining the battery (to be determined), the other option would be to power down the phone every so often then bring it back up again. At that point only the default stuff is running, and not all the programs I ran 'yesterday'.
 
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