Task Killers Truly Not Needed?

[IncredibleMess]

I've read around alot about people saying task killers aren't needed because Android is Linux based (not windows) and can handle all the apps in the background so theres not need for a task killer. My question is arent there apps or services that take up alot of memory and shouldn't be constantly running (without you knowing that is) For example there are apps that constantly update (recieve data) like Mail or twitter or Anti-virus (which constantly is on the guard for new apps or settings being changed). I also noticed that after taking pictures with my phone camera it said the camera was running when i already closed it. i checked running services under the settings and the camera was taking 74% of my usage (i did refresh many times to make sure it was running). I've came to the conclusion that task killer is good for a few apps that are constantly running in the background but not as much for apps that don't constantly run in the background (like games, after you close them)

Can anyone correct me or share wisdom?


P.S. I have bought Advanced Task Killer Pro and i'm curious as if it would truly hurt or help my battery or Processor usage. Even if is truly no needed is there ever a time when it could be useful?

 

[KlaymenDK]

Any modern operating system can offer its apps more memory than what's actually in the machine; desktop operating systems do this by "paging" out rarely-used bits of memory to slower "virtual memory" (which is actually a huge binary file on the hard drive).

Android can't afford a page file (although some custom ROMs have implemented that, for use with fast sd memory cards), so if it ever gets into a situation where a new app requests more memory than what's available, Android kills (that is, quits in an orderly fashion) apps that are (a) not visible to the user and (b) inactive (that is, not running a service of some sort, such as playing music).

So no, a task killer is not needed -- as in, it's not technically necessary. But because of this, a lot of apps don't have a "quit" button, so if you really want to stop an app, you will need something like a task killer. That may also be useful if you for some reason wish to free up memory or CPU cycles, but as said it's not really needed.

Hope that was enough of an answer.

 

[pwabbit]

Android has a built in task killer. It functions automatically to free memory when needed to run the active app. What isn't provided for, is the ability to select which specific programs get terminated. The app killers available in the Market, allow the user to select which programs get killed. That is a good feature if one or more of your programs are a resource hog and doesn't sleep like it is suppose to. Your battery would drain fast if the problem program were not killed when running in the background. A second task killer really is not needed unless you have a needed app which is also a sleepless resource hog.

 

[gorn]

Android kills (that is, quits in an orderly fashion)

Actually just to clarify Android does a hard kill of the Activity. So if i run AppA, do some business, then switch to AppB, at the time of the switch it is AppA's responsibility to save state so it could recover from a fresh start, however AppA is also still in memory. Then if I switch from AppB back to AppA, it's real fast as AppA was already in memory. However if instead of switching back to AppA I launch AppC which is very memory intensive, AppA is instantly killed, as the state was already saved.

Killing tasks to free up memory is pointless, as Android can take care of that for you, and actual "free" memory is a waste, better for it to be a cache of your recently used programs.

Services can be different as they could waking up your CPU (bad for battery life). But it just depends on how the service is implemented.