Task Managers and your Hero

[Bhav]

Excellent, excellent post.

Really well explained. I used a task killer for a few days, and then read somewhere that it's not always a good thing and you should let Android manage apps the way it wants to. Now I understand why.

And honestly, performance on my Hero has been far better since I ditched the task killer. I found I was rebooting my phone far more when I was using it!

 

[impaler]

+1, good stuff! I've always felt the OS should conduct memory management FOR ME. Why should I manage it? I'm the user.

 

[Eaglesfan9106]

so when my phone boots and i see all those like 15 or 20 apps list on my task killer i shouldnt kill them? and the ones that pop up even though im not using them ? and one last question so if im playing a game or browsing the web i dont need to kill those apps when im done? please help ive somewhat got what he was saying but im not a techy person so yea..alot of it went in one ear out the other

 

[MarkHirt]

Correct you DO NOT need to kill anything so remove your task killer app

 

[COMOEd]

+1, good stuff! I've always felt the OS should conduct memory management FOR ME. Why should I manage it? I'm the user.

Totally agree with you.

 

[romeosidvicious]

Correct you DO NOT need to kill anything so remove your task killer app

This is true 99% of the time. I keep a task manager around, TaskKiller (paid), for those times when some developer makes a mistake and leaves a memory leak in or doesn't know how to put a program in the background so that I can kill badly behaving apps and uninstall them.

 

[Eaglesfan9106]

How do I know if a app is misbehaving

 

[TF1984]

How do I know if a app is misbehaving

If you have really poor battery life, high awake time, or otyerwise poor perfokance.

The best is using spare parts as already mentioned.

 

[MarkHirt]

You don't need a "taskiller" to uninstall an app and power cycle the phone.

What I find humorous is... You install a taskiller to kill processes that really don't need to be killed then leave the taskiller running

This is true 99% of the time. I keep a task manager around, TaskKiller (paid), for those times when some developer makes a mistake and leaves a memory leak in or doesn't know how to put a program in the background so that I can kill badly behaving apps and uninstall them.

 

[Bhav]

What I find humorous is... You install a taskiller to kill processes that really don't need to be killed then leave the taskiller running

The task killer i used to use would kill itself as well lol.

 

[MarkHirt]

But that was a programming error right

 

[Bhav]

Nope...it always listed itself (and by default selected itself to be killed as well)

 

[romeosidvicious]

You don't need a "taskiller" to uninstall an app and power cycle the phone.

Quite true but being a *nix guy I prefer to do everything without rebooting

What I find humorous is... You install a taskiller to kill processes that really don't need to be killed then leave the taskiller running

Yeah that is always amusing. Mine is not set to run as a daemon and exits when you hit back. Nothing is automated. I just find it faster to kill a bad app with than it is to reboot most of the time.

 

[kronium]

I have to respectfully disagree. I find that my phone lags often without using a task killer. Android will continually let my phone drop to under 30 megs of available ram. Whenever I'm in the 20 range, lag sets in. I set advanced task killer to kill every 2 hours, and have it ignore core apps that I use. My phone happily zooms along all day. I also find that this method increases my battery life. Maybe because active ram storage increases battery draw? Also I find that after killing apps, Android doesn't try to spawn too many apps on its own, at least not like on bootup.

 

[TF1984]

I have to respectfully disagree. I find that my phone lags often without using a task killer. Android will continually let my phone drop to under 30 megs of available ram. Whenever I'm in the 20 range, lag sets in. I set advanced task killer to kill every 2 hours, and have it ignore core apps that I use. My phone happily zooms along all day. I also find that this method increases my battery life. Maybe because active ram storage increases battery draw? Also I find that after killing apps, Android doesn't try to spawn too many apps on its own, at least not like on bootup.

I will respectfully offer the opposite in opinions. I was addicted to advanced task manager but after letting it go I have been getting more than three times my original battery life. There is a Slight amount of lag, but very very slight, like a quarter of a second. I guess it really comes down to personal usage and apps. For us to have a true answer on which is better, it would have to be a controlled experiment with identical usage, one w/ and one w/o task manager.

 

[greatcasa]

I will respectfully offer the opposite in opinions. I was addicted to advanced task manager but after letting it go I have been getting more than three times my original battery life. There is a Slight amount of lag, but very very slight, like a quarter of a second. I guess it really comes down to personal usage and apps. For us to have a true answer on which is better, it would have to be a controlled experiment with identical usage, one w/ and one w/o task manager.

And I'll have to counter back again. I'm getting three times the battery life now using the free app "Advanced Task Killer" and have gone from high 30% to below 15% awake time. I have hardly any apps and use this to kill stock apps like the browser, calendar, and camera, and then the task killer itself. The OP may well be right in describing how traditional linux works, but one thing is for sure, that applications aren't going to sleep, even the stock apps like the browser, do not always go to sleep and cause battery drain. I had another task killer that always ran in the background it seems and didn't help that much in the end. The "Advanced Task Killer" however allows you to kill it when killing the other apps and I have found nothing but increased battery life and faster operating speed.

To the OP, thanks for the info. But I don't think this can easily be applied across the board to all Android systems, and Sprint Hero's for that matter. It's very apparent with all the battery life issues that many people are having (and many different kinds) that there is a flaw somewhere in the OS that is causing most of these problems and not allowing even OS appications like the browser go to sleep. I really hope that these battery life issues are fixed in the upcoming 2.1 OS, or at least improved.

 

[Bhav]

And I'll have to counter back again. I'm getting three times the battery life now using the free app "Advanced Task Killer" and have gone from high 30% to below 15% awake time. I have hardly any apps and use this to kill stock apps like the browser, calendar, and camera, and then the task killer itself. The OP may well be right in describing how traditional linux works, but one thing is for sure, that applications aren't going to sleep, even the stock apps like the browser, do not always go to sleep and cause battery drain. I had another task killer that always ran in the background it seems and didn't help that much in the end. The "Advanced Task Killer" however allows you to kill it when killing the other apps and I have found nothing but increased battery life and faster operating speed.

I disagree. I used the same app for a while, and found I was power cycling my phone almost every day because of weird/slow app behaviour afterwards. A week since I ditched it, and my phone has not needed to be power cycled for almost four days straight. Awake time is 17% and battery life has been, well, not an issue since I plug the charger in every night anyway.

 

[greatcasa]

You can't disagree with how MY phone is behaving. You're missing my point. Every phone is reacting differently to all these different "fixes" everyone is trying. There is no simple explained answer and solution. The problem lies within the OS somewhere, and needs to be addressed at the source (Google/HTC), so that we can enjoy our phones without having to worry about this crap.

I disagree. I used the same app for a while, and found I was power cycling my phone almost every day because of weird/slow app behaviour afterwards. A week since I ditched it, and my phone has not needed to be power cycled for almost four days straight. Awake time is 17% and battery life has been, well, not an issue since I plug the charger in every night anyway.

 

[toomuchgame441]

Wow who knew that id find the thread I was looking for on the very first page, I've been enlightened on the idea of a task killer, thanks so much. I know how to properly use my task manager now

 

[scott1103]

amazing I had no idea I've been on winmo for several years Thanks for the knowledge

 

[dascjb]

Peak Memory Usage is a nice app to see what processes are running and how much RAM they are using as well as the peak RAM it has used Peak Memory Usage for Android :: Tools Application - AndroidZoom.com

 

[romeosidvicious]

Peak Memory Usage is a nice app to see what processes are running and how much RAM they are using as well as the peak RAM it has used Peak Memory Usage for Android :: Tools Application - AndroidZoom.com

While that app is better than most as it takes into peak memory and such it really doesn't report how much memory you have available for other programs. If you know and understand Linux memory management this could be really helpful but if you are coming from the WinMo side of things this could be even more confusing than folks like me talking about why task killers are not necessary.

From my personal perspective thanks for the link. I will be checking it out.

 

[Tisnatch]

I have to agree with kronium. I read this article and I was like "wow... now I understand." So I stopped using my task killer. And I started experiencing more laggy behavior from the interface. For example, I'll be in the Phone app (which you would think would extra special super priority over other apps) and experience lag tapping the keys. Or I'll be flipping through the People app looking for contact information and experience major lag when changing which information tab under a contact displays. If I kill the extraneous tasks when this happens (e.g. Browser, The Weather Channel, Facebook) then everything is bright and snappy again. I can't disagree with the original post, which was excellent, BTW. But my perceived experience on the Sprint Hero suggests that the task killer can be useful.

 

[andyacecandy]

I turned off task killer today and my phone was VERY laggy... typing text messages was laggy, clicking on things like menu took longer to open up, going into settings took longer, etc etc...

Hmm...

 

[romeosidvicious]

I see apps that aren't stock being listed as stuff needing to be killed. I doubt all of the apps listed need to be killed. I would track down what app is not releasing memory, known as a memory leak, and then get rid of it.

With respect to the poster who said this cannot be applied across the board: you are wrong. This is the way Linux and in turn Android handles memory. There is nothing to debate. If killing apps improves your performance as much as claimed then you have apps that are badly coded. At this point a task killer could be necessary if you neither willing to troubleshoot nor live without the apps but that is not the fault of the OS. The fault with these issues lies with the app developers.

I cannot argue with how your phones are behaving. I can tell you with certantity that the OS is not at fault. Troubleshooting your apps would likely cure your ills or you can keep using task managers but the fact is that Android is not the cause of the issues. When my phone was stolen yesterday I had almost a week of uptime and the only reason it wasn't longer was because I let the battery run down after a party. I hadn't user a task killer a single time in that week and my phone was fine. I don't keep apps that have memory leaks no matter how cool they might be and I spend the time to troubleshoot when there are issues. Policing badly coded apps is not the job of the OS or the interface. The OS on the hero handles memory leaks so much better than winmo that it's downright laughable but it can only do so much.

In short troubleshoot your problems because they are not the norm. If you aren't willing to do that then YOU require a task manager and your OS still doesn't.