Going Cold Turkey: Deleting the Task Killer Experiment

[jondude11]

Today, I finally did it. I finally deleted Advanced Task Killer. Ever since getting my Eris, I have been dependent upon it. I have in fact been obsessed with it, making sure I clicked the ATK widget to kill all programs before ever putting my phone to sleep. I was obsessed with battery life and the Messages App issue. Now, I am giving it a shot.

My two biggest concerns are phone speed and battery life. My battery life has been fine, mostly because I shut my 3G off when I am at home or work. My phone speed has been lagging considerably, and I am hoping that deleting ATK, along with deleting some unused Apps and clearing the cache, will help keyboard lag and general app lag.

I will keep you posted to see what happens. I am excited, I know that a lot of you have highly suggested not using Task Killers, and I am excited to not be bound by it. However after a week if I notice considerable battery life loss, and no considerable difference in device speed, I may reinstall it. We shall see!

 

[Shnuddy]

Also try clearing your call history if you haven't already done so. That is supposed to help with phone lag.

 

[Podivin]

Interesting experiment, keep us posted.

 

[Kid Twist]

I got rid of ATK a long time ago. I noticed no deterioration in either performance or battery life without it (stock Eris 2.1). The phone runs just fine, battery life is the same, and I no longer waste time compulsively checking and killing apps. In fact, it probably runs a bit better because apps open, do their business and eventually shut without me interfering. Also, for all I know, I was killing processes that kept certain apps running properly.

It turns out, the biggest deteriminant of battery life is me. When I leave the phone alone, a charge can last 18-24 hours or more. If I keep playing with it, it runs down much faster.

 

[iu09ali]

I got rid of ATK a long time ago. I noticed no deterioration in either performance or battery life without it (stock Eris 2.1). The phone runs just fine, battery life is the same, and I no longer waste time compulsively checking and killing apps. In fact, it probably runs a bit better because apps open, do their business and eventually shut without me interfering. Also, for all I know, I was killing processes that kept certain apps running properly.

It turns out, the biggest deteriminant of battery life is me. When I leave the phone alone, a charge can last 18-24 hours or more. If I keep playing with it, it runs down much faster.

I agree.

 

[homerpez]

When I updated to 2.1v3, I never bothered to re-install ATK. Just chose to "back-arrow" out of apps if I wanted to close them, and "home key" them if I wanted them to keep running. I don't notice any difference in performance, or in the number of times I have to reboot the whole phone (which is about the same regardless).

I can't say I went "cold turkey" though... I still technically have the task killer that's in AndroZip, just in case. Just not a running "always on" one.

 

[willdogs]

1.5 ATK was a must

2.1 I never installed it and dont miss it. 2.1 handles memory MUCH better.

 

[Tooleman694]

um ok.. I guess if you like going about the hard way to stop applications..

more power to you..

 

[Demache]

um ok.. I guess if you like going about the hard way to stop applications..

more power to you..

Why would you need to stop them? I find task killers to be a waste of time and memory.

 

[Tooleman694]

Maybe because its taking up memory and you want to free that memory up..

The task killer uses very little space on your drive.. not much to worry about..

 

[Hiroshika]

The main problem with ATK is that most of the tasks you kill, just start booting up again once you kill them. So then getting some lag when theyre booting back up. Its pointless.

 

[Demache]

Maybe because its taking up memory and you want to free that memory up..

The task killer uses very little space on your drive.. not much to worry about..

That's space I could use for more useful things. Like internet cache.

 

[v941726]

try auto memory manager. then you have a tiny program keeping track for you. you let it do the work

 

[Tooleman694]

Dude it uses like a half a meg..

 

[jondude11]

Day 1:

Things I like about not having ATK:
-Not compulsively closing my apps. I used to sometimes turn my phone off of sleep just to be sure nothing was running.
-I have definitely noticed less phone lag. However, this could be also due to some of the memory I've cleared out.
-I have really noticed no battery life change so far, except when I had a 45 minute phone call, my battery life went from 45% to 21%... I'd say usually it would go from 45% to 30-35% in that same span. Though that is a big difference, I am not sure ATK is entirely to blame. I will need to keep seeing on long phone calls.

I will keep you posted on shorter phone calls. I am also in the process of charging the phone fully for the first time since removing ATK. Usually it takes me 2-3 days for my phone to need a recharge because I keep 3G off when I am at home. I will keep you posted!

 

[Kid Twist]

Certain apps are designed to start themselves up, run through various processes, and then shut themselves down, eventually. Task killers thwart these apps when they start. So the apps respond by going back to the beginning of the cycle and activating themselves all over again. And then the task killer intervenes, and the cycle starts once more. And on, and on. So instead of freeing your phone's resources, you are repeatedly using memory, processing power and battery juice.

 

[Podivin]

-I have really noticed no battery life change so far, except when I had a 45 minute phone call, my battery life went from 45% to 21%... I'd say usually it would go from 45% to 30-35% in that same span. Though that is a big difference, I am not sure ATK is entirely to blame. I will need to keep seeing on long phone calls.
!

According to the HTC site the talk time on the Eris is 214 minutes, that's about 3.5 hours. Based on that, a 45 minute phone call using 24% of the battery is just about right - maybe just a couple of percentage points high, but that could easily be explained by having another app(s) running, weak cell tower signal, etc etc. I'm sure HTC specs are based on a 'perfect world'.

 

[Demache]

Dude it uses like a half a meg..

You can cache a lot in half a meg. Buttons, emoticons, some smaller pictures.

Its just a waste of my internal memory if I find no use for it.

 

[timmywa]

Maybe a new thread for this, but a previous commenter said they can use the space for more internet cache. Is there some strategy for setting this cache amount? I've changed mine down to 2mb. It tends to stay within a mb on either side. I clear it pretty often. I don't do too much browsing, this forum and another one is mostly it. If I increase the amount of cache for the browser, will I see faster speeds? I mean, it seems fine the way it is.

Thanks.

 

[Demache]

Maybe a new thread for this, but a previous commenter said they can use the space for more internet cache. Is there some strategy for setting this cache amount? I've changed mine down to 2mb. It tends to stay within a mb on either side. I clear it pretty often. I don't do too much browsing, this forum and another one is mostly it. If I increase the amount of cache for the browser, will I see faster speeds? I mean, it seems fine the way it is.

Thanks.

For the browser it just means it will be able to store images and such on the phone itself temporarily so it doesn't have to download them each time. I'm not sure if you reduced it if it would make things any faster though.

 

[Podivin]

Reducing the size of the browse cache would most likely make the browser slower, but possibly only to the point that it would another computer to notice - we frail humans wouldn't might not be able to tell a difference.
However reducing the browser cache might make the phone a little less laggy at times. I'm basing that on the fact that when I clear caches (the largest of which is always the browser) it helps to reduce lag on my phone.

 

[Tooleman694]

more browser cache lol..

 

[jondude11]

Question for all:

One of my biggest concerns with deleting my Task Killer is the known bug afflicting the Messages app, not letting the phone sleep. I've always noticed on ATK after receiving or sending a text message through Handcent (even though I do not get any notifications from Messages), that the Messages App would pop up, and if I forget to kill it, it'd still be running, and I'd sometimes lose some battery if I forget.

Now, without ATK, I've not noticed TOO much battery loss after texts, maybe a percentage point or two lower than usual. However, I checked once on the Droid's stock Apps manager (in Settings) and Messages was not present (just Handcent). Do you think the Messages App bug is really a byproduct of using ATK? Do you think Messages maybe starts up when the phone does and without interruption it shuts itself down when it realizes you're not using it, but if you manually shut it off it'll manually start up again?

EDIT: By the way, my battery is at 91% after being unplugged for 22 hours. I have not made any calls or turned on 3G or Wifi, since I haven't been on the go - the percents down are mostly just due to texting. My estimate would be when I had ATK with the same situation I'd probably be at 93% or 94%... A couple points sure, but not enough at this point to suffer through my OCDness and sluggish operation

 

[Podivin]

Do you think the Messages App bug is really a byproduct of using ATK? Do you think Messages maybe starts up when the phone does and without interruption it shuts itself down when it realizes you're not using it, but if you manually shut it off it'll manually start up again?

Yep. I think this is one of those places where letting Android do it's thing comes in to play. As you've noticed the built in 'running processes' function doesn't even show Messages. *I* think that's because it doesn't show any app that's better left alone, and that the apps it shows are shown in case you've got something running wild that is NOT one of the built-in apps.

 

[xx_bishop_xx]

Gotta get the Anti-Task Killer application.