Strange apps keep restarting

[crossmr]

So i recently got advanced task killer as my battery drain was really high and wanted to look a little closer at what was running. After doing a mass kill, i found my battery life significantly improved.

However, I also noticed some weird apps that kept restarting.
Fore example:
Video player
the stock app that comes with the phone. I've never used it, never opened it even once, yet it seems to want to keep loading itself into memory

Samsung Allplay
Never even opened it. Never set it up, yet it keeps starting.

Google+ - Don't use it, never opened it. It kept opening so I opened it, made sure all sync, notifications etc disabled, and it still keeps starting.
Weird part is when it's running it also doesn't show up in the task manager to see what the process is that is running

Youtube, Clock, Game hub, genie, and facebook (again with all notifications and things turned completely off) keep restarting itself. K-9 keeps restarting itself even though I haven't set up a single e-mail account for it.

When I killed off all these apps, my battery life has significantly improve. Night and day kind of stuff. I'm talking 80% less drain when idle. I was losing 10-15% over 2 hours of the phone just sitting there, but after I killed everything off, it was down around 1-2% in the same time frame. That is huge, so this is somewhat important and not just busy work.

any thoughts on this? It doesn't make much sense to me why some of these apps are starting and doing something.

 

[Harry2]

Read this ...
http://androidforums.com/showthread.php?p=5194166

Harry

 

[crossmr]

Read that already, and as I pointed out I'm seeing a massive difference in battery life when they're killed, so I really can't buy all the claims made in that article

For such an open and customizable and controllable platform, I'm not seeing an easy way to figure out what is going on with these apps and what business they have being open.

His explanation for apps appearing, doesn't make sense in my case:

* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when more memory is needed.
* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when it’s done doing what it needs to do.
* Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when you haven’t returned to it in a long time.
* Most services (while possibly running in the background) use very little memory when not actively doing something.
* A content provider is only doing something when there is a notification for it to give. Otherwise it uses very little memory.
* Killing a process when it isn’t ready only causes it to have to reload itself and start from scratch when it’s needed again.
* Because a task is likely running in the background for a reason, killing it will only cause it to re-spawn as soon as the activity that was using it looks for it again. And it will just have to start over again.
* Killing certain processes can have undesirable side effects. Not receiving text messages, alarms not going off, and force closes just to name a few.
* The only true way to prevent something from running at all on your phone would be to uninstall the .apk.
* Most applications will exit themselves if you get out of it by hitting “back” until it closes rather than hitting the “home” button. But even with hitting home, Android will eventually kill it once it’s been in the background for a while.

For example, why was facebook open? All notifications and interactions with it are killed. No app is signed up to use it, and I didn't open it manually. It doesn't fall under any of those reasons for opening and yet it's open. In fact he claims android is "hard coded" to shut it down, but all it seems to be doing is starting it back up.

Same with Allplay, I'd never opened it or set it up at all, and yet there it is doing stuff in the background. As a user, I should be able to control that. He may think the footprint is negligible, but in my experience it's simply not. The battery life is so drastically different, i have to do something about it.

The bigger point of my post was not about the fact that i used a task killer, but what I found was going on when I used it. That apps which shouldn't be starting were. Like video player. It just has zero business running, and yet it was continually restarting after being killed. It just doesn't make any sense.

 

[chanchan05]

1. Facebook is integrated into the system. The Facebook app itself isn't open, but a Facebook service is. The Facebook app consists of two processes, one for the app and one for the integrated service. The integrated service is open because you are regularly using apps that use that integrated service, the main ones are: Gallery, Contacts, and Messages. All of these inherent services are connected to Facebook.

2. How new is the phone? Because if its newer than a month or two, bad battery life is expected, and you may have actually ruined the capacity of the phone to improve battery life by running the task killer to repeatedly kill apps. As explained in the article, Android will load the most used apps in RAM so you can launch them quickly. IF the phone is new, it will load up the stock apps and will keep on doing so until it learns your usage patterns and load only the most used apps. Also, if you are on a new phone, battery life will always be bad because a battery needs to get around 6-10 full cycles before it starts putting out full capacity of its charge.

3. I lose approximately 8% per hour, but that's because of my setup and I have a far smaller battery than your SIII (my battery now is a third party product with 1200mah, compared to the 2100mah on your SIII, so about half the size). That's with Tweetdeck, Dropbox, Sugarsync, Facebook Messenger, Google+, Go Launcher, Go Locker, Go Notifications, Go SMS Pro, and several other apps left to run on the background and forever connected to mobile 3G internet. Switching mobile data off puts my battery life to about 3-4% per hour. So yes, while I have all those apps you mention as actively running, it does not put a big strain on my battery, just as I would expect it actually. So I doubt that the stock apps you mention such as allShare and Google+ are the culprits. I'd be more inclined to look at third party applications to be making the problems. I've had a problem with K9 putting my phone on an excessive battery drain before. If you have not set up an email for K9, why not uninstall it anyway?

4. Do you have apps with Airpush ads? You know, notifications in the pull down menu saying you to look at this app or service or that? Usually they have a green star icon. These are battery draining as well. Remove those.

5. How many widgets do you have, and what Widgets are these?

6. Honestly, if the phone does not have too much data yet, or you can handle it, I would suggest a hard reset. Having K9 installed but it not being setup makes me wonder if you have several apps in there that are just sitting and not being used, with one of them being a rogue app with bad coding causing battery drain. ezPDF for example, one of the best PDF readers in the market once released a bad update that drained my battery in like 3hrs when using the app. An update recitified it and lets me last 6hrs while continuously reading with a backlight on.

7. One last thing, are you sure the apps are "running" and not simply cached? That is, they are sitting on RAM but aren't using CPU cycles? Because if they are cached, they won't be using battery whatsoever. That's one problem with task killer apps. They state what apps are in the RAM, whether they are using battery or not.

 

[crossmr]

1. Facebook is integrated into the system. The Facebook app itself isn't open, but a Facebook service is. The Facebook app consists of two processes, one for the app and one for the integrated service. The integrated service is open because you are regularly using apps that use that integrated service, the main ones are: Gallery, Contacts, and Messages. All of these inherent services are connected to Facebook.

I haven't integrated facebook with anything intentionally. I did not integrate it into contacts, or anything else.

How new is the phone? Because if its newer than a month or two, bad battery life is expected, and you may have actually ruined the capacity of the phone to improve battery life by running the task killer to repeatedly kill apps. As explained in the article, Android will load the most used apps in RAM so you can launch them quickly. IF the phone is new, it will load up the stock apps and will keep on doing so until it learns your usage patterns and load only the most used apps. Also, if you are on a new phone, battery life will always be bad because a battery needs to get around 6-10 full cycles before it starts putting out full capacity of its charge.

The phone is a week old, I ran it for a week before getting the task killer today.
Sitting completely idle, it was using 5-10% an hour (much closer to 10). After running the task killer, it was like 1%. I simply can't ignore that.

3. I was planning to set up K-9 so that I could have my yahoo and gmail accounts in one app, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.
I've only installed about hmmm..25-30 apps beyond the stock apps. Almost all well-known apps.

4. I don't believe so. I installed airpush for something..but the app was crap so I uninstalled it right away.

5. I have my home page. That's it.
Weather widget (big one) wifi manager widget.. 4 icons for 4 apps and that's all. I killed the other pages. There is a samsung "suggest" widget on one page, but I don't use it regularly. Like once 3 days ago.

6. I've already transferred and organized several thousand photos in a photo safe, not something I'd like to repeat.

7. Again, the state of the app isn't really relevant so much as why it is running.
The results are clear. Pre running ATK, battery drain was crazy. Run it once and battery drain is suddenly very reasonable. At this point it's kind of hard for me to return to the point before I ran that, but I can see is that some very odd apps are starting up. I expect an app to start for a variety of reasons:
1. I start it
2. another app needs its function
3. It's periodically checking for an update
4. a push notifications comes through that app, maybe an IM
That's it.

It's been a few hours since I hit the ATK, so if I open it up I see the following apps have loaded themselves:
Skout - area based chatting, I've completely turned off every single push notification in it, but it still feels the need to turn itself on (the only chatter I regularly use that does this)
Facebook - again, all notifications turned off, I haven't integrated it with anything on my phone. (task manager claims Mqttpushservice and mediauploadservice running)
Google+ - all sync and notifications turned off, yet it feels the need to load up
Maps - I use a Korean map program here, not the built in program, never even turned it on
Youtube - haven't touched the app since yesterday and I've killed it half a dozen times today.
Video player - never even opened it ever, already use VLC and told the system to use that as default. This is actually running with the Transcodeservice
K-9 mail - covered above
Olleh market (phone provider market shop, this may be checking for updates)
ollehTV now - this is an app for controlling the built in DMB TV on my phone, haven't used it, no idea why it's on
Chaton - samsung's IM client, this was loaded, but had no idea why. I'd never turned it on. Finally turned it on and signed up for it, turned off all notifications, push messages etc, still turns itself on. (included with the phone)
S Voice - never used it. Accidentally turned it on a time or two, but not since I closed it, it seems to load itself up from time to time
Genie - no idea what this is, never loaded it.
Gallery - don't use it, use quickpic and I've set that as the default.
allshare - smallagentserverservice is running as active.

In addition to this, there are a couple of IM programs running in memory (in the regular task manager) that for some reason don't show up in ATK. they show as running with services.
A lot of these are actually running as active with a service or something, but there seems to be no obvious or easy way to actually shut them off.

 

[chanchan05]

1. You don't integrate it intentionally. The gallery app detects you have Facebook installed, so it connects to the sharing service automatically. The same thing goes for any sharing app you have. Google+, Twitter, whatsoever. These apps will start the service in the background and cache it. And cached apps run near zero battery.

2. Yes you can. One because its battery is not yet fully cycled. Two Because its a smartphone. A fully running, setup smartphone will rarely last more than 15-20hrs in real life usage. Get used to it. Unless you go the iOS way which severely limits multitasking in order to preserve battery life. A smartphone is more like a computer than your traditional phone. Windows for example runs at least 20 processes behind the scenes once you install it and running it empty of any programs. Android is basically a desktop OS (Linux) re-designed to run on an ARM processor. Also you yourself said that the phone is about a week old. Android is an OS whose battery life and overall smoothness gets better the more you use it, since it monitors your actions. It is able to identify which apps are your favorites and which not, and it will load the favorites more often and not run the unused ones. But it needs time to learn all this.

You can limit background processes in your Galaxy using Menu>Settings>Developer Options>Background processes though. But that would entail another set of issues I will mention later.

3. Doesn't matter if they are all well known apps. If one is not yet optimized to the OS version you are having it will or may act up. I mentioned ezPDF as an example. It's a very well known app and is considered by many as the BEST pdf reader on Android. And an errant update acted it up.

4. Then an airpush ad won't probably be a problem then.

5. The state of the app is VERY relevant. Because the state of the app tells you whether or not it is actually running. There is a very different definition of running as to cached. Cached means its loaded on the RAM, but there is zero battery usage over time. Running means it's actually using CPU cycles and thereby using up battery. Android is Linux, and Linux runs by automatically loading the most used apps immediately onto RAM in order to save battery, since loading them up from scratch uses up more battery than just moving them from dormancy in RAM to actively using CPU cycles. The problem with killing apps you don't want using a third party program is that it makes Android think that you are actually accessing the apps, and thus adding points to their usage and making them into favorites. Each time you kill them, it counts as a use. And if you kill them more times than you actually use your favorite apps, they will take precedence in loading. A kill-reload cycle will kill more battery than it would save. That is why its best to let Android manage itself except in cases of rogue apps.


6.

7.
Skout- I don't use it. I don't know what its for, so I can't really comment.
Facebook - as stated above, you don't have to use it or open it or integrate it manually. Gallery, Contacts and Messages detect it's there. Its part of their design. Again, the two processes you mention are for sharing and are just cached, not using a battery at all.
Google+ - same story, its just the sharing service connected to Gallery, SMS, and Contacts.
Maps - can't say about that since you're using a different program. Google Maps loads because like Facebook, it has sharing status capability.
YouTube- it has a share function.
Videoplayer - transcodeservice stands for the running service which AFAIK is used for video playback. Doesn't matter if you use VLC, it has to use that service to access the GPU, which is why its running.
k9 - I don't use it, so no idea what its doing.
Olleh - this is a third party app, if I have to point to anything, this could be it.
Chaton- this is an app that may have a running service to check for chat messages.
S-Voice - this runs by default. You can talk to your phone and say "Hello Galaxy" and it will wake up immediately and listen to voice commands. If I remember correctly, Vlingo was the one who made it. I would check if the "actively listen" feature is enabled. Turn that off. That eats a lot of battery.
Genie - no idea
Gallery/QuickPic - same banana. It's still a gallery app that has access to Facebook, Google+ and other app sharing features, so it will access the related services to those.
AllShare - this loads up on new Samsung phones, but as it falls into disuse Android eventually learns to not load it. So don't bother. Although you may want to check settings and see if there's something enabled in it.


As far as I can see:
- Most of the apps mentioned are ones that load up on cache, and not use up any battery at all. The ones worth looking into are:
Skout - unknown app to me
Olleh - are they sending you any notifications at all?
K9 - This might have a push service running which is why it does this.
S-Voice - if you have active listen turned on, this will eat quite some battery.
Genie - no idea
-If IM apps are running and seen on regular task manager, then these are usually actively running and eating up battery or a relatively large amount of RAM than considered normal for active background processes. The regular task manager would normally show how much RAM and CPU they are using. If they are using CPU while you are leaving them in the background, I would say they are two of the culprits for your reduced battery life.

 

[Crashdamage]

DO NOT use any task killer or memory optimizer. They actually waste power and may disrupt critical system processes and degrade performance. 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 full explanation.

Chanchan05 made a good effort at giving you good advice - take it! Task killers have been discredited over and over. Just because you don't understand how Android works and why processes run (or you *think* they are) doesn't mean Google engineers don't know *exactly* what they're doing.

 

[chanchan05]

Oh I forgot to mention the problem with limiting Android background services: It will impair your multi-tasking. For example, if you leave an app to take a call, and the app you left is not labeled as a essential device, your progress may be lost.

Also, it may cause apps to not update because their service process falls out of the limit.

 

[BigRedGonzo]

Just for information, Genie is the service that works the News and Weather Widget that comes on many phones.

A suggestion that you might want to try. For all the preinstalled apps that you have that keep starting, I assume you have ICS or Jelly Bean on the SIII. Why not disable the apps completely from the Apps menu. If they have had updates, you'll have to uninstall the updates first, but after that Android has a nice feature that will pull the plug on all those things that you don't use. Go to System Settings>apps>all apps and go down the list and hit disable on the ones that you definitely don't use. Then you don't have to waste time killing them. I have a Bionic and after the ICS update, some of the preinstalled apps were uninstallable (if that's a word.) Things like Lets Play Golf and Blockbuster and a few others were able to be uninstalled, instead of just disabled.

FWIW,
BigRedGonzo

 

[crossmr]

You don't integrate it intentionally. The gallery app detects you have Facebook installed, so it connects to the sharing service automatically. The same thing goes for any sharing app you have. Google+, Twitter, whatsoever. These apps will start the service in the background and cache it. And cached apps run near zero battery.

This seems counter-intuitive especially since all those services generally require you giving explicit permission for things to connect and integrate with them. This does not seem to operate in the spirit of the android I'd constantly heard about.

A fully running, setup smartphone will rarely last more than 15-20hrs in real life usage. Get used to it.

I'm aware of that, but the rate and which the S3 battery was dying was simply inexcusable, and "getting to know me" just doesn't cut it.

The state of the app is VERY relevant. Because the state of the app tells you whether or not it is actually running. There is a very different definition of running as to cached. Cached means its loaded on the RAM, but there is zero battery usage over time. Running means it's actually using CPU cycles and thereby using up battery.

Some of them were actually in the running active list in the task manager. That's part of the problem. I'd rather control what i want to run when i want to run it rather than having the OS guess at what it thinks I might want, and additionally, I'd like to make sure that things that are running as active processes are running with my premission. Like Facebook seems to be running a process and 2 services. Yet I've disabled all. There really isn't a replacement for facebook unless I want to go mobile through the browser.
Allshare is running active constantly with a process and a service. It's not even set up. I feel like I should be having far more control over the apps on my phone than this.

Maps - can't say about that since you're using a different program. Google Maps loads because like Facebook, it has sharing status capability.

I've got 2 entries for google maps as well as an entry for samsungmapservices, total 3 processes and services running active. This as well seems rather excessive.

Videoplayer - transcodeservice stands for the running service which AFAIK is used for video playback. Doesn't matter if you use VLC, it has to use that service to access the GPU, which is why its running.

Except VLC isn't running, and there aren't even any videos on my phone right now. Zero.
Actually found this related to it:
S3 while charging....Video Running

Chaton- this is an app that may have a running service to check for chat messages.

All push is turned off, and it was running constantly before I even set it up. Again not much sense being made here. It's one thing if I have been running an app all week to try and load it up, but an app that has never been opened, never even been configured?

S-Voice - this runs by default. You can talk to your phone and say "Hello Galaxy" and it will wake up immediately and listen to voice commands. If I remember correctly, Vlingo was the one who made it. I would check if the "actively listen" feature is enabled. Turn that off. That eats a lot of battery.

It looks like that was enabled. I've disabled it. When I killed it with ATK, that might have been one of the things making a huge battery difference.
It did not restart as quickly as other apps.

Most of the apps mentioned are ones that load up on cache, and not use up any battery at all. The ones worth looking into are:

I'll focus on apps specifically listed in the "running" area. A couple of them are IMs, I'll try contacting the Devs too...because I feel that if I've disabled all notifications for them, they should not be loading at all. They've got no reason to. I'll be checking for messages when i actually turn them on.

Why not disable the apps completely from the Apps menu. If they have had updates, you'll have to uninstall the updates first, but after that Android has a nice feature that will pull the plug on all those things that you don't use. Go

I wasn't sure if "disabling" something like Gallery might cause an issue for say quickpic or other apps. it warns about that.

 

[Crashdamage]

I've used Android since v1.0. Believe me, you are worried about stuff you should simply leave alone. Re-read my previous post and the link in it. Take the good advice others have offered seriously.

Look at it this way: If you check services on any desktop computer - Windows, Apple or Linux - can you identify and explain every running process? Have you ever needed to?

Unfortunately, you've messed around with task killing so much, confusing how Android is designed to work, that chanchan05 might be right that the easiest, best way to restore your device to proper, efficient operation might be a factory reset.

 

[BigRedGonzo]

...
I wasn't sure if "disabling" something like Gallery might cause an issue for say quickpic or other apps. it warns about that.

I use gallery, so I don't know, but MailDroid works fine with Gmail and Email(stock apps) disabled. Handcent also works fine with the Messaging app disabled. If you try and have issues, you can always enable it again. One bit of information that may be helpful, if you disable an app, it goes to the bottom of the apps list.

BigRedGonzo

 

[davidmanvell]

Since you have an S3 go into Settings and battery. look at what is using the most of your battery there. Android ICS and JB log all of that for you. That once screen shows what is draining your battery. Most likely its going to be SCREEN that is draining it. Because you have such a large one.

Second week after having your phone your battery usage will be much better.

Yes uninstall any task killer app you have please. Installing them will decrease your battery time in the long run. It may increase battery time for a few minutes but in the long run you lose a huge amount of battery time wit them activated.

Trust us on this one. Every single person who is experienced with Android will tell you the same thing. Just say no to task killing programs.

 

[chanchan05]

The problem is that you are using ATK. It's a third party program that you really shouldn't be running at all unless you know exactly what you are doing. AFAIK It shows everything loaded that is labeled as a "process" as actively running, despite not eating any battery at all. As I said, Android is designed to load up processes and apps into cache immediately to save battery.

And I will repeat what I said previously and what Crash re-emphasized: If you have messed around and ruined Android's own app usage tagging through task killing too much, the only way around Android killing too much apps in a cycle that kills battery quickly is a hard reset.

A worst case scenario we once has here was that he was task killing too much that his phone went into a vicious cycle of killing and restart. The phone was trying to load too much apps into too little RAM because all of those apps became tagged with "essential" because of too much usage. What happened was that the phone auto-killed an app to load another app, but immediately auto-kills another to load another app again, causing massive battery drain and heat.

 

[crossmr]

The problem is that you are using ATK. It's a third party program that you really shouldn't be running at all unless you know exactly what you are doing. AFAIK It shows everything loaded that is labeled as a "process" as actively running, despite not eating any battery at all. As I said, Android is designed to load up processes and apps into cache immediately to save battery.

No. I was getting that information from the running area of the normal task manager, not ATK.

ATK does not list processes and services, except for coloring items with a service as in green.

The built in taskmanager specifically lists process and services on each item.
That's what I was using.

As I said

I'll focus on apps specifically listed in the "running" area.

Forget about what ATK is, or was doing. I actually only used it about 4 or 5 times over a period of 2 hours. Right now I only open it to get a more complete picture of what has loaded, not to kill anything. The issue here is well beyond ATK, but apparently some people can't get over that.

 

[chanchan05]

I was getting confused as to whether you were running ATK a lot or not. Anyway, i see you turned off active listen. Check how is your battery after that. Reboot the phone, then use it for a couple of days then report back on usage. The active listen on Vlingo kills my battery in 7hrs if left open.