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Task Killer---Yes or No ?

I called Verizon about another matter and told them the only gripe I had with the DInc is that it killed the battery fast. He recommended that I install ATK.
I was in a local Verizon store and told the dude in there that the battery drained pretty fast and HE TOO recommended that I install ATK.
I was in a BestBuy in the phone department getting an Invisible Shield for my DInc and HE TOO recommended that I install ATK.... SO, I installed ATK.
My experience has been really good! I have it kill non-system apps every 30 minutes with no adverse effects and my battery life has improved about 30% since then.

After reading through this thread though, I have stopped ATK from running in the background and starting automatically, and have purchased/installed System Panel and will see how it compares.

Ok, this is a bit like changing the oil in your car every 30 minutes. Completely unnecessary. Potentially damaging (put the old gasket AND new gasket on=massive leak). Masks the real problem (you won't notice an oil leak doing this). (admittedly not a great analogy. your not going to permanently damage things, but temporally you could mess things up.)

You almost certainly have a broken app that's either broken or set-up wrong, and being a CPU hog or preventing the phone from sleeping. Use system app to try and figure out what it is.

This goes for EVERYBODY. If you notice a significant improvement in either performance or battery after running taskiller, you have a broken app you need to fix.
 
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I agree with Tony N. (and many on this thread). I've learned about phone management here than anywhere. I've had my Incredible less than a week, and was not happy about the battery going dead at the end of the day, and my wife not able to reach me if she needed me on my drive home. I got ATK, used it (wrong, I've learned here) and yes, my battery life was extended significantly. However, I am more informed, and have since uninstalled ATK have purchased System Panel.

This may sound REALLY stupid, but I'm not COMPLETELY sure what SP is really doing for me yet, but am I to just let it go let it do it's thing? I'm geeked about my Incredible and want to maximize it fully and efficiently, not spend my day poring over System Panel and closing things, analyzing all the time. That seems to defeat many purposes of a phone... I'll reread this thread and EXCLUDE the necessary items, but other than those, should I be ENDING the remaining tasks that are listed as 'active'?

THANKS FOR EVERYONE'S HELP!
 
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I agree with Tony N. (and many on this thread). I've learned about phone management here than anywhere. I've had my Incredible less than a week, and was not happy about the battery going dead at the end of the day, and my wife not able to reach me if she needed me on my drive home. I got ATK, used it (wrong, I've learned here) and yes, my battery life was extended significantly. However, I am more informed, and have since uninstalled ATK have purchased System Panel.

This may sound REALLY stupid, but I'm not COMPLETELY sure what SP is really doing for me yet, but am I to just let it go let it do it's thing? I'm geeked about my Incredible and want to maximize it fully and efficiently, not spend my day poring over System Panel and closing things, analyzing all the time. That seems to defeat many purposes of a phone... I'll reread this thread and EXCLUDE the necessary items, but other than those, should I be ENDING the remaining tasks that are listed as 'active'?

THANKS FOR EVERYONE'S HELP!

Why did you Purchase system panel? The free version works fine for me. (ok, on second thought, I should buy the paid version just to support the developer of this GREAT product. Basically I don't want people to think they need to shell out $2.99 to try it out.)

And no, you should only be ending things that are ACTIVE and using alot of cpu (and you really shouldn't anyways, more on that later). You can tell by looking at the bar on the left side of the app's icon, as well as looking at the total CPU time. If they're a lot higher than everything else, you might have a problem.

You want to use System panel to diagnose problems, that you then go and fix (either by tweaking setting, using a different app, or killing it as needed [in that order preferably, but that's up to you). You'll know you have a problem if the cpu clock bar and cpu pie (measures cpu load) are both high. Ignore memory usage, android really does a great job handling memory by itself.
 
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I agree with Tony N. (and many on this thread). I've learned about phone management here than anywhere. I've had my Incredible less than a week, and was not happy about the battery going dead at the end of the day, and my wife not able to reach me if she needed me on my drive home. I got ATK, used it (wrong, I've learned here) and yes, my battery life was extended significantly. However, I am more informed, and have since uninstalled ATK have purchased System Panel.

This may sound REALLY stupid, but I'm not COMPLETELY sure what SP is really doing for me yet, but am I to just let it go let it do it's thing? I'm geeked about my Incredible and want to maximize it fully and efficiently, not spend my day poring over System Panel and closing things, analyzing all the time. That seems to defeat many purposes of a phone... I'll reread this thread and EXCLUDE the necessary items, but other than those, should I be ENDING the remaining tasks that are listed as 'active'?

THANKS FOR EVERYONE'S HELP!

System panel merely gives you a look what's going on and offers you options to affect it. Key words being it offers you options. It doesn't really do anything for you. You should use it to find apps that are using up the CPU excessively or whatever and kill them, then find out why they were doing that.
 
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Just typical of a lot of the Android Community. Take, take, take.

If skipping lunch at Mcdonalds for an app hurts your pocket, you got no business with a smartphone, much less a Dinc.

Im not saying that people should always buy apps, but certainly don't downplay it and think they shouldn't when they decide to.

Why should a dev work for free if someone is willing to help em out?
 
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I have already purchased about 15 apps (ranging from .99 to 29.99)
I used to be a programmer and believe they should be rewarded for their work if it is beneficial to me.

Just my 2 cents...

I was a Computer Science (software) major who went Computer Engineering (hardware). So I appreciate developers as well. It takes time to write apps, and they should be paid for their time. If you want it, and there's no free version, either pay or learn to code it yourself. They didn't have to do that and upload it to the market for you.
 
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I was a Computer Science (software) major who went Computer Engineering (hardware). So I appreciate developers as well. It takes time to write apps, and they should be paid for their time. If you want it, and there's no free version, either pay or learn to code it yourself. They didn't have to do that and upload it to the market for you.

But what if there is a free version? Am I responsible for monetizing the company's crap business model for them? (your argument only makes sense if their business model is crap. If it works, then there's no problem, I'm doing exactly what they expect a user to do)

I'm all in favor of developers getting rewarded for their work. I donate to rom developers for rom's I use. But it's their choice to put out a non-ad supported free version.

And there is a world of difference between using a free market app, instead of a paid one, and using a pirated version. Using pirated software is STEALING. I don't think anybody is talking about that.
 
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Just typical of a lot of the Android Community. Take, take, take.

If skipping lunch at Mcdonalds for an app hurts your pocket, you got no business with a smartphone, much less a Dinc.

Im not saying that people should always buy apps, but certainly don't downplay it and think they shouldn't when they decide to.

Why should a dev work for free if someone is willing to help em out?

And I was suggesting that people use the free version FIRST. As I specifically said...
euph_22 said:
ok, on second thought, I should buy the paid version just to support the developer of this GREAT product. Basically I don't want people to think they need to shell out $2.99 to try it out.
 
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But what if there is a free version? Am I responsible for monetizing the company's crap business model for them? (your argument only makes sense if their business model is crap. If it works, then there's no problem, I'm doing exactly what they expect a user to do)

I'm all in favor of developers getting rewarded for their work. I donate to rom developers for rom's I use. But it's their choice to put out a non-ad supported free version.

And there is a world of difference between using a free market app, instead of a paid one, and using a pirated version. Using pirated software is STEALING. I don't think anybody is talking about that.

I was referring more to people using APKtour and getting paid apps. I know a lot of people do it this way and it rubs me really wrong.
 
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Why did you Purchase system panel? The free version works fine for me. (ok, on second thought, I should buy the paid version just to support the developer of this GREAT product. Basically I don't want people to think they need to shell out $2.99 to try it out.)

And no, you should only be ending things that are ACTIVE and using alot of cpu (and you really shouldn't anyways, more on that later). You can tell by looking at the bar on the left side of the app's icon, as well as looking at the total CPU time. If they're a lot higher than everything else, you might have a problem.

You want to use System panel to diagnose problems, that you then go and fix (either by tweaking setting, using a different app, or killing it as needed [in that order preferably, but that's up to you). You'll know you have a problem if the cpu clock bar and cpu pie (measures cpu load) are both high. Ignore memory usage, android really does a great job handling memory by itself.

Hmm. I actually downloaded the free version first to get a feel for it, but wanted to buy it because, 1., helping the developer for something that is handy. What's 2.99? And, 2., I was interested in a few of the things the full version offered.

I'm a freelance designer at times (I do have a full time job) and I understand how people want something (sometimes a lot) for nothing, and I appreciated what the developer offered, and I paid for it.

ANYWAY, to keep on topic, several folks have mentioned that all System Panel does is show you things, it doesn't DO anything for you. Fine, I get that. But the second part of the above statement seems to always be followed by "...so you can figure out WHY it's taking up so much CPU..." That's the part I'm not sure about. HOW do I figure out why something is doing something potentially wrong using the SP info, and troubleshoot it?

The web site is somewhat ambiguous about the troubleshooting aspects.

thanks!
 
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Ok, to explain my position, that goes counter to everyone else here!


A lot (most) people blindly kill with a task killer, and many of these processes either restart on their own, or break other things due to other apps relying on those dependencies. This ends up slowing down the phone and hurting stability.

Someone who has taken the time to watch these processes and apps, and know what restarts, and what depends on what, will kill apps that have no business idling in the background for various reasons. This takes a lot of time, patience, and trial and error to get down what can be safely nuked and what should be ignored.

Most common processes for a phone:
Email
messaging
clock
alarm
voice dialer
Sense anything!
phone!

These should be ignored. They are usually well coded, and well behaved.

Services should not be stopped.

Why stop any app? Some don't idle correctly, hogging ram, and more importantly, cpu time. This WILL slow down the phone and cause the battery to drain at a breakneck speed. You have a choice. Uninstall said application, or end it.

Apps that have done this to me:

Browsers
Streaming players
Beautiful Widgets (hanging gps)

These are just a couple off the top of my head that I recall.

If you are using Sense, and have Launcher Pro installed (or Plus which I have), why does it need to be running in the background, even in idle? Answer: It doesn't. Tip: NEVER use an auto task killing app, or one that runs in the bakground. Its counterproductive.

See why its not an easy answer? If you don't know what you are doing, its better to trust your resources to the Android gods.

My advice:
Get a simple app called Multi Task Manager.
MultiTask Manager - Android app on AppBrain

Change the god awful background, set the margin to 5, do NOT enable services, and map it to your search soft key. Simply long hold search and set it to multi task manager.

Long press will end an app. Short Press will switch to it. Scroll by swiping.

Learn what to ignore, as you can set it in the list.

A good place to start:


Most common processes for a phone:
Email
messaging
clock
alarm
voice dialer
Sense anything!
phone!

If you want to go further with this, purchase autostarts from the market. Root your phone and you can set what doesn't start on certain events. It also shows you what WILL startup during certain events, which is a good lesson.


Signed,

Me.

Never crashes, never has battery issues, never has slowdowns.

Your mileage may vary, and I am more than certain most will disagree with me.

PS--If Android was so perfect at all that it does, then we would never need OS bugfixes.

No OS is perfect, and therefore, amendments must be made to statements like, Android does a superior job of managing resources. True, but NOT always true.

well spoken and from a wonderful resource for the Incredible community. Thanks.
 
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Right now SP is showing my memory at 98m....75% used 25% free with minimal active apps and a bunch inactive. Is this normal? It seems like a waste of memory to me and I have the urge to start killing inactive apps to free all that "wasted" memory.

Is this just my lacking knowledge of Android? Or should I free up memory ?
 
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Right now SP is showing my memory at 98m....75% used 25% free with minimal active apps and a bunch inactive. Is this normal? It seems like a waste of memory to me and I have the urge to start killing inactive apps to free all that "wasted" memory.

Is this just my lacking knowledge of Android? Or should I free up memory ?

That's normal. Just keep repeating the mantra "free memory is wasted memory" over and over again.

Android handles memory differently than windows. Caching recently active apps greatly reduces load time and system costs, without any loss of battery life (ram takes the same amount of juice whether it's empty or full). If more ram is needed for an active program/service it will boot out low priority programs to free up space.
 
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How do u know if its going into sleep mode as it should?

Does that affect the phone functioning? I.E: receiving texts and emails. Is it like the X's battery management function which turns of data, gps, wifi etc?

What is different about the phone in standby?

Now if something is cached in ram....does that prevent that ram from being accessed and used by programs that you actually wanna use.

EX: If out of 512mb of RAM, cached programs are using 256 of that RAM, does that mean only 256mb is available to a running program you are using?

no in general, but yes on occasion
here is a good article to read, by one of the android devs
Android Developers Blog: Multitasking the Android Way

that said I too am one of the many using system panel, which has an app killer included in the monitoring app.
that sys pan was mentioned so often should be reason enough to at least look at it.
I have only needed to kill app once, some glitch in barcode scanner/camera stuck my dinc in a bad place, cpu stuck at 998mgz usage for prob an hour or more phone getting warm was what actually brought it to my attention, though it was obvious when I tried to use it, but using sys pan I was able to find the cpu eating app and kill it.
*Though it is tuff not to kill , coming from an winmo Omnia.


Thanks for the link to the article. This will go in my Android 101 file.

Thanks to one11sgt for asking your (and my :)) questions.
 
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