apps running in background?

[cloyd]

I am new to the world of android, but have been using using Linux on my home computers for about three years now. I may be missing the obvious, but it seems that when I open an app, it never completely shuts down. I seems to always be running in background. I can use a task manager and attempt to shut them down, but it seems like they are still running. I say this because they still show up in the vertical list of opened programs on the left side of the sceen (what do you call the thing? I occupies the same spot as the unity launcher in ubuntu after you click on it's icon at the bottom of the page.) on my asus transformer. How can I completely shut down an app after starting it?

Another, related question: I can hit the power button briefly and the screen shuts down, but it is still on. If any program is playing audio, the audio continues to play, though as far as I can tell the machine is doing nothing else. Start up just takes a few seconds from this state. All of the apps I had opened earlier are still running. If I hold the power button down for about 4 seconds, then it shuts down completely. It takes a few minutes. It takes even longer to start back up from this state, sometimes agonizingly long. When it starts, all off the previously opened apps seem to be closed. Soft shutdown vs hard shutdown, or is the soft shutdown a shutdown at all, and just a way to kill the display and stop that battery drain?

Should I use a "hard" or "soft" shutdown when I am finished using the machine?

Lastly, it seems that after having the machine on for several hours, it often gets slow and sluggish (makes me think of my old Dell that ran XP). Is this because I have so many apps running in the background?

 

[chanchan05]

1. Ditch the task killer. The app list you mentioned is a history of the apps you opened, not the apps you have running. Like the history of websites you opened, they're listed but they aren't necessarily open on your browser.

2. Hitting the power button briefly is not a shutdown. Its just turning the screen off, just like when you turn off the monitor of your PC without shutting down the CPU. This is to conserve battery power and leave the device running. Remember that Android OS was designed for phones and tablets that may have 3G service. How are you supposed to receive calls and SMS on them when they are fully shut down right? As for whether you should shut down after use, totally depends on you. I for example never shut down my devices. I may receive important calls or SMS. What's the use of a phone that's turned off?

3. It gets slow and sluggish because you are using a task killer. Once your device idles, Android tries to restart the apps you killed with a task killer because it thinks it crashed in the background, thus using up memory actively. When you try to run your device again, Android needs to clear memory first and set priority as to which apps need to be removed from cache and which to leave alone because of the other apps it started This also eats up more battery. This problem would not happen if you have no task killer and just exit the app as its supposed to. Just properly exit the app by pressing the back button, or if the app has an exit button use that. That will exit the app properly. The app will run in the background however if you press the home button. And even if you mistakenly left an app running in the background, after a few minutes of disuse the device will shut down the app, but leave it in cache so that when you start it up it goes to where you last left off.

 

[Crashdamage]

You *are* missing the obvious. Heed chanchan05' good advice.

Short press on the power button kills the screen, puts the phone in 'sleep' mode, but music, for example, will keep playing as it should. Long press power shuts the device off. Long press again reboots.

DO NOT use any task killer or memory optimizer. Android is excellent at handling processes and memory with no help from 3rd-party apps or user assistance. Just let Android do it's job, relax and enjoy your phone.

See:
http://lifehacker.com/5650894/andro...ed-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
for a fulll explanation.