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Best task manager/killer

bzzzzz

Well-Known Member
Dec 27, 2009
154
2
uk
I'm not sure if this has been done before (I had a brief search and couldn't find it) but I don't see any harm in having an up to date version of this thread.

We all know that battery power is an important issue with the HTC Hero. I just wondered what people had discovered in the way of apps and using their phones to optimise usage.

I've included things which I like, and which I don't because I find it useful to read about applications which aren't so good, so I know to avoid them, but feel free to try them for yourselves.

Close everything

I installed this from the market, after reading it suggested on a blog, but I'm not convinced its the best to be honest. I've "closed everything" and yet still seen tasks running in the background I'm going to remove this pretty soon unless someone points out a reason not to.

TasKiller

Worked fine for the first week but I've now removed this as I prefer Taskpanel

TaskPanel

I like this a lot and have used for a few weeks. It tells me all the applications which are running and allows me to stop them all. If I want to keep something running (eg scrrebl) in the background then I can set it to ignore "kill all background tasks" for specific applications. It also tells me how much available memory I have.


finally a couple of apps that I find useful for increasing battery usage although not task killers in themselves are.

screebl

This little app turns the screen off very quickly (after about 10 seconds) unless it looks like you're using the phone. It thinks you're using the phone if you're holding it at a certain angle (which you can set).

Graphical Battery Stats Monitor

I installed this yesterday. It takes a while to collect data, but its telling me that it i'm using 5% battery an hour, which would explain why I need a daily recharge.
 
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The fundamental problem here is that most people don't have a clue about Linux, which is essentially Android. You DON'T need a task manager for any of the applications, as the memory is managed by the system. Anyone who has used a linux system knows that even on a system with 64GB of RAM linux will use 99% of the RAM, if you ran the same linux on a system with 128MB of RAM it will use 99% of the RAM, this is called Caching and makes linux very efficient with memory. So don't waste your time with a task manager.
 
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The fundamental problem here is that most people don't have a clue about Linux, which is essentially Android. You DON'T need a task manager for any of the applications, as the memory is managed by the system. Anyone who has used a linux system knows that even on a system with 64GB of RAM linux will use 99% of the RAM, if you ran the same linux on a system with 128MB of RAM it will use 99% of the RAM, this is called Caching and makes linux very efficient with memory. So don't waste your time with a task manager.

Funny, when phone starts to slow down a bit, i use task manager and wow speeds back, its not as effective as you say it is which is why these things are made in the first place. When memory gets down to about 23mb that's when I start noticing slow down.
 
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Tottaly agree with the posts about Linux's use of memory & it's management. My Ubuntu system utilises my 8GB of RAM (kernel option) better than my Windows system..

However.. with Android I find "killing" some processes that are in the background (apps that you want to close as you are no longer using them) sometimes slow down the phone. Or be it 'seem to' slow down the system.

So as soon as I kill the unwanted processes the phone seems to be faster..

:thinking:

Just like on a PC..killing a process will free up memory..but as you've pointed out Linux's memory management means unused memory is somewhat wasted..
 
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Funny, when phone starts to slow down a bit, i use task manager and wow speeds back, its not as effective as you say it is which is why these things are made in the first place. When memory gets down to about 23mb that's when I start noticing slow down.

Very good point! Now I haven't had any slow downs as such, so don't know about it personally. Is it possible for you to describe them?
Is it taking say 1 minute, 10s etc for the browser to open? Is it 50% slower? What is slower? Does the call quality go into the drugged slow motion effect?

What happens as far as I know on a linux system is that the system caches a lot of things into RAM, say you use the albums a lot to show pics to your mates. And since all the data is in RAM the pics load faster, but say you want to flick through all your mp3s, then linux kicks out the cached pics, and starts caching the mp3s, so that you can flick through them. The slow downs are transient, a bit like a DSG gearbox ;-)
 
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Funny, when phone starts to slow down a bit, i use task manager and wow speeds back, its not as effective as you say it is which is why these things are made in the first place. When memory gets down to about 23mb that's when I start noticing slow down.

No..these things are made because people used to windows feel they need a ctrl alt del equivalent as soon as there's any slowdown. In reality, you should try to find the app that's causing the slowdown and uninstall it
 
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A task manager is as the name suggests a way of managing tasks (processes). You can thus kill a process..but the program which the process belongs to will still be installed on your phone and therefore the process will/can run in the background..[I find some apps automatically run in the background even after I have killed them earlier on]... (unless you have it blacklisted..if the task manager allows you to do so). Therefore it does not uninstall the program that causes the lag.

I'm not sure how advanced the taskkillers out there are (I have not tried them all) but if one of them allowed you to uninstall an application via its GUI then yes.. your statement is correct.. otherwise no.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bhav
......In reality, you should try to find the app that's causing the slowdown and uninstall it....
I'm no techie and learnt something by reading this thread but reading the above quote wouldn't a task killer help you do just that?

It would be nice if a task killer incorporated graphical charts to show CPU usage / memory usage etc for each process. I know there a separate apps that allow you to monitor this but I have not used a task manager which incorporates both.. may be someone can suggest one..
 
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....program which the process belongs to will still be installed on your phone and therefore the process will/can run in the background....

Yes yes yes I do realise a task killer will not uninstall a program. My point was that this thread sort of concludes that android does not need a task killer but the way to stop lag was to find the offending program and uninstall it. So a layman could use a task killer to find the offending program by process of elimination and the uninstall in the usual way.
 
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Yes yes yes I do realise a task killer will not uninstall a program. My point was that this thread sort of concludes that android does not need a task killer but the way to stop lag was to find the offending program and uninstall it. So a layman could use a task killer to find the offending program by process of elimination and the uninstall in the usual way.

The only time one single program will cause a memory leak (and cause your phone to become slow) would be when it is improperly coded and buggy or what not. [Saying that though..a 3D game that requires additional graphics memory..which some Android phones may not have would also cause lag on a phone that does not have sufficient hardware etc] ..When I download apps from the market place I do so by checking its popularity / ratings and reviews.

Therefore after doing all this it is unlikely one application by itself would cause a memory leak / cause your phone to lag.

Usually you use a task manager because the phone seems slow. So you want to kill processes to free up memory and Voila.. the phone is faster/
smoother.
After using many apps and closing them the phone does seem to slow down because in effect the apps are still running and have not been killed.

This uses memory. More memory means less memory is available to use. More used = slow. Well, this works with other phones / windows. But we know about the Linux memory management so ....

Therefore what your saying is true somewhat because obviously any process you kill will be one less process out of the many that will be running in the background. Therefore almost immediately you will probably notice a performance increase with your phone.

Therefore scientifically using a task manager solely to see what is making the phone lagg will not help...unless as stated before the task manager showed you the memory / cpu usage for a process.

====
The only way you could do what you said (process of elimination) would be this way:-

1) Use any task manager to kill every app running.
2) Start your 1st app
3) Is phone lagging? (Probably not because it is running solely by itself)..

Now if you kept on doing this experiment without killing the apps in the background before starting the next app for testing... you will experience some sort of sluggishness.. and then you will say THIS APP IS CAUSING ME TO LAGG... this would be an unfair test..

You would have to kill any background tasks before testing the next app to see if it was lagging..

I hate it when I can't explain things properly.. but I have tried to give it a go.. please do contest what I have said as I know I am not always right like everyone else and I do make mistakes and I too want to learn.

thanks.
 
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This is very simple;
The Task Manager is not written by GOD, it uses the same API and system calls. If the linux (android) kernel can't see the memory leak or a runaway thread, then 99% is that the task manager won't see it.
The task manger simply consumes more resources and slows the phone down.

A process can be running in the background using 0% CPU, what point is there killing it? By default apps are installed in RAM, so what difference does it make if they are running at 0% CPU??
How much "free" memory do you need, 100MB, 30MB?? if you have enough for the biggest app, that's all you need. If a thread is using CPU, in linux the system is re-niced to make it nicer to others, that is given lower priority. This is done by Linux you don't need to do it manually, but you can if you are root, a pointless exercise.

I have astro file manager, and it has a task manager, I launched it out of curiosity and it is just a nice geek tool, no use except for knowledge. The people who can't understand why they don't need a task manager, are the ones who will download one, use it and break their system and winge and cry, like the ones who complain their alarm has stopped etc
 
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Ok So I'm learning a few things.

"The fundamental problem here is that most people don't have a clue about Linux, which is essentially Android. You DON'T need a task manager for any of the applications, as the memory is managed by the system. Anyone who has used a linux system knows that even on a system with 64GB of RAM linux will use 99% of the RAM, if you ran the same linux on a system with 128MB of RAM it will use 99% of the RAM, this is called Caching and makes linux very efficient with memory. So don't waste your time with a task manager".

I am actually a linux user and have been for a couple of years. I've used ubuntu, linux mint, fedora, musix and debian amongst others. Sorry to get pedantic but Linux isn't essentially Android - what you mean is that Android is an operating system that is based on (or even is) linux. Furthermore I have no idea how linux systems manage RAM and I've never had to. None of my laptops suffer from untimely battery drop or from lag.

Anyway this isn't productive. What I want to try and do is make sure that I can go a day or two without having to plug in my phone. I could take my old Nokia away for a weekend and not need to worry about taking a charger because I knew that with full charge Friday morning it would easily last till Monday.

If task killers aren't the solution, then what should be done.

Furthermore has anyone else tried using this.

Graphical Battery Stats Monitor

It's supposed to collect data about battery usage for various applications which could well be the holy grail for which we're searching, but so far I haven't had it running enough for it to display any data.

PS I'm amazed by the quick response to this and the number of responses. Many more to any question that I've posted in ubuntu or linux mint forums. So big well done to all you folks and thank you
 
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Task killer will indicate the programs that are using processing cycles, but i'm coming to the line of thinking that memory plays a huge part in this aswell. It also highlights the point that the hero needed a bit more juice under the hood, unless they can optimize the hell out of the OS, have more memory or and reduce your amount if apps on the first generation of android phones (and i doubt that will make much of a difference) running a few tasks in the background are likely to cause problems.
 
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Sorry to get pedantic but Linux isn't essentially Android - what you mean is that Android is an operating system that is based on (or even is) linux. Furthermore I have no idea how linux systems manage RAM and I've never had to. None of my laptops suffer from untimely battery drop or from lag.

What I want to try and do is make sure that I can go a day or two without having to plug in my phone. I could take my old Nokia away for a weekend and not need to worry about taking a charger because I knew that with full charge Friday morning it would easily last till Monday.

If task killers aren't the solution, then what should be done.

Sorry bzzzz, that is what i meant to say :eek:

I think sir your solution lies here, not on the software side :D May I present to you;
Buy Mugen Power 3200mAh Extended Replacement Battery For HTC Hero (GSM) with Battery Door in White / Dark Brown [HLI-HEROXL]

That should give you the battery life you need :)
 
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I think you may be right. I'm not sure if I want my phone to be larger, but that may be the price I have to pay.

The other solution, and I am going to try before splashing out on a bulky battery is to buy a spare battery and keep it in my wallet for emergencies.

If I install the app that lets me store all my store card bar codes onto my phone then I can remove my store cards from my wallet and replace with battery.

I'll keep you posted as to how successful this is.:cool:
 
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I'm no techie and learnt something by reading this thread but reading the above quote wouldn't a task killer help you do just that?
Yes, and for the purposes of troubleshooting a task killer is useful.

However, most people just use task killers to end all apps that they think shouldn't be running anymore, rather than actually trying to find the one that's causing an issue in the first place.
 
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