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Michelle666

Well-Known Member
Jun 15, 2010
119
1
I've downloaded the Advanced Task Killer. Do I need it?

Every time I press it, it says its killed 3 apps...even though I haven't done anything with the phone. Also its memory seems to be dissappearing quite quick. Maybe thats from the things I've downloading.

Gosh this phone is amazing but very confusing!
 
Android manages tasks very well. When they go to the background, they dont really use any resource. Some apps arent written well and may need to be killed, but if yuou dont know what you're doing, I wouldnt recommend using a task killer.

Youhave to set all your system processes as ignore, becuase you can really mess your phone up if you dont.

It even kills things like the alarm clock, so a lot of tweaking is required.

Personally I dont use one, or recommend it.
 
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Android manages tasks very well. When they go to the background, they dont really use any resource. Some apps arent written well and may need to be killed, but if yuou dont know what you're doing, I wouldnt recommend using a task killer.

Youhave to set all your system processes as ignore, becuase you can really mess your phone up if you dont.

It even kills things like the alarm clock, so a lot of tweaking is required.

Personally I dont use one, or recommend it.

Hmm! Might take it off...I don't know anything about setting my system processes etc!
 
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You don't need a task killer. The more you press "Kill all" especially, the more battery life you'll lose and the worse your performance is likely to become. Why? Because you've just killed processes running in the background to listen for push e-mail, weather forecast and news updates, Facebook/friendstream, whatever that go onto your widget. Congratulations, they now have to restart all over again and put your CPU under heavy load. You've just defeated the point of improving performance.

The only thing a task killer is good for is killing a badly coded app that's actively draining your battery. Well-coded ones don't.
 
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i am being confused that everytime I kill the apps the readings of the memory go back up a lot. Does it actually mean that the task killer is somewhat necessary? Having read lots of threads about the killer, some say it is a must and some dont

Well yes, the open applications are still in memory. When you kill them, they are removed from memory.
 
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Actual Android engineers--as in people who work at Google, you know?--have said task killers aren't necessary. Cyanogen, one of the biggest names in the Android modding scene, has said they aren't necessary. I'll take their word over average Joe's any day, and my personal experience has matched that. Not killing tasks doesn't impact performance or battery life at all in the six months I've been using Android.

In addition, Froyo manages memory even better than before. It allows far fewer processes to idle in the background than Eclair did. Very trim.
 
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If a task killer was necessary, wouldn't that functionality be built into the OS? If it meant longer battery life for phones, then it would also make Android phones more attractive to purchasers which would lead to more sales. I'm certainly no expert, but I've done some reading on this and I agree with grainysand. Unless you've got a particularly problematic app, a task killer seems to be a waste of time and can cause problems of its own. A lot of OS tweaks get passed around on the Internet that are completely pointless or even detrimental to the OS in question.

I've done some battery life tests (not exactly under stringent conditions - just a basic test) and the battery life of my phone appears to be no different whether I use a task killer or not. I uninstalled the one that I initially installed and I'll just let Android do its thing and manage everything.
 
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The blanket claims that a Task Killer isn't needed are just nonsense.

It takes seconds to put any system process on ignore which you must do.

A few comments here have touched on this but I have used it countless times to kill apps that have crashed. The alternative is to reboot.

Today infact 'Skies of Glory' froze on me (apparently it didn't want to be put to the background and then returned again) the game uses a huge amount of resources and without a Task Killer I would have had no choice but to reboot.

I have also had the htc Camera app crash on me once, amongst several other smaller apps.

I understand that Android can manage apps and you shouldn't use a task killer to frequently close processes. But saying you don't need a task killer at all is just wrong.
 
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I am totally losing my head whether I should keep the killer or not. if i get it uninstalled How I close up the HTC built-in internet browser as I dont see any "close" button for the past weeks I've been using my Desire and some other apps without "close" buttons as well. take the browser as example, would it be still running if I close it by just pressing the back button? this is the only way to "close" the broswer that I could've found.
 
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You don't need the Task Killer at all from my personal experience. The best way to ensure you won't need one is as follows:

1. Open as many none native/non google apps as you can and using the back key return to your home screen.
2.Go to: Settings>Applications>Running Services
3.Any apps that are still open and running there should be closed and removed from the app drawer through uninstalling.

All well coded applications will either close on returning to a home screen via the back key or will have been coded to run in the background at such a low priority that it won't appear in the running services window. Any that do not follow this pattern are badly coded and I haven't come accross any highly rated and well known app devs apps that do not follow this.

I mean the myBooty app even follows the above rule as does the SpankBooty app :D
 
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There maybe some apps that have been written badly and do not clean up properly, this is nothing to do with the OS its poor coding practice. Either way there is an inbuilt way for force close an app if you need to.

Settings>Applications>Manage Applications

Then select it and select to Force Stop, also useful if you wish to wipe an apps memory cache.

Basically the Android OS is a modified Linux OS from what I can tell.
 
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I am totally losing my head whether I should keep the killer or not. if i get it uninstalled How I close up the HTC built-in internet browser as I dont see any "close" button for the past weeks I've been using my Desire and some other apps without "close" buttons as well. take the browser as example, would it be still running if I close it by just pressing the back button? this is the only way to "close" the broswer that I could've found.

Glad I'm not the only one confused!
 
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from my personal experience after a few hours of usage my phone becomes very sluggish. I open up my task killer and it says I have around 30mb of memory free, I kill all apps and its suddenly fast again with around 140mb free.
So telling me the need for a task killer is nonsense is, well, nonsense to be honest.

I would say to the op, leave it installed, it wont hurt anything and maybe try a day using it then a day without it and see if you notice a difference. I personally get better battery life out of it as do several of my friends who also use it. It doesnt kill system tasks by default and I also have the important apps set on ignore.

And saying that killing push mail and syncing apps will actually decrease your battery life.. wtf??? push destroys your battery life and its a known fact that data activity is one of the biggest battery drains
 
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from my personal experience after a few hours of usage my phone becomes very sluggish. I open up my task killer and it says I have around 30mb of memory free, I kill all apps and its suddenly fast again with around 140mb free.
So telling me the need for a task killer is nonsense is, well, nonsense to be honest.

I would say to the op, leave it installed, it wont hurt anything and maybe try a day using it then a day without it and see if you notice a difference. I personally get better battery life out of it as do several of my friends who also use it. It doesnt kill system tasks by default and I also have the important apps set on ignore.

And saying that killing push mail and syncing apps will actually decrease your battery life.. wtf??? push destroys your battery life and its a known fact that data activity is one of the biggest battery drains

Before your post, I became highly confident and uninstalled the killer after reading others words. Now I've read your post and started re-considering if I should install the killer back again. install...uninstall...install....uninstall...Holy Christ. ...

For the most part, I perosnally think that people thinking the killer as a must are probably having a mental reaction while the killer is not actually working.
 
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from my personal experience after a few hours of usage my phone becomes very sluggish. I open up my task killer and it says I have around 30mb of memory free, I kill all apps and its suddenly fast again with around 140mb free.
So telling me the need for a task killer is nonsense is, well, nonsense to be honest.
Just curious as to what apps your running that drain your memory that drastically? I'm constantly popping in and out of various media apps, downloading on the net, surfing, using multiplewidgets, emulators etc and always struggle to have more than 50MB memory used. Phone always flows swiftly.

I would say to the op, leave it installed, it wont hurt anything and maybe try a day using it then a day without it and see if you notice a difference. I personally get better battery life out of it as do several of my friends who also use it. It doesnt kill system tasks by default and I also have the important apps set on ignore.
I get a day and a half battery usage and it only ever drains quickly when I download anything 100MB plus using the mobile data connection. (Which I also leave on with appsupdating hourly to bi-hourly.

And saying that killing push mail and syncing apps will actually decrease your battery life.. wtf??? push destroys your battery life and its a known fact that data activity is one of the biggest battery drains
Your right push mail and syncing apps does drain the battery but so long as you setup your schedules for both with reasonable time frames not every second what has that got to do with killing the apps themselves. The apps can and will quite happily sit there dormant so long as you schedule correctly. The above point in reference to killing apps is eroneous.


See above...
 
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