The ugly side of task killers, from an IT specialist standpoint.

[jdailey1981]

I talked to a friend of mine about them and he works for a company as an IT specialist. He said task killers will kill the phone over time and here is why:

1. All programs are running for a reason, be it reading or writing. To kill the programs can destroy them.

2. You just killed the apps. Prepare for lag and fast battery drain, because these apps are gonna all start back up at one time to finish what they were doing.

3. Android is like Linux. It will shut down less used programs to keep the memory from getting low.

In the end, he said, get rid of task killers, unless you want to keep buying a new phone every few months.

Just thought this was interesting.

 

[pkopalek]

The 'buying a new phone' is outrageous, since, even if you somehow messed something up with the read-only executable portions of your apps (which would never happen), you could perform a hard reset.

I think 2 and 3 are good points though. Most people don't have a good use for task killers, for what they use the phone for on a daily basis.

 

[rick311]

in regards to your sig: AT&T = iPhone killer.

 

[MOS95B]

yeah, I don't see how killing apps will affect the hardware in any way whatsoever. You might trash the OS, but a hard reset to factory would cure that.

 

[Rubik76]

There are a couple of good points there, but killing an app that is running in memory should, in no way, damage the application itself.

 

[ChiTownJim]

I'm on day 5 with no task killer and I must say my phone is running much snappier then it was before... So in my opinion I don't think they are necessary and if they were I think they would be on the phone already. But to each there own

 

[theacousticprophet]

I used to have Advanced Task Killer. I didn't have any problems while it was installed, but -thanks to an informative post by our much appreciated undead android forum post queen, OTD- I decided to test my phone performance without it. It's been about 2 weeks since I uninstalled it, and I have not seen any noticeable change in "snappiness" or battery life.

 

[gruss]

Well gee I'm an IT specialist and while I agree I think they are pointless for 99% of users including myself, I do not see how it would damage the hardware. No mater how many ill informed sudo commands I ran on my linux box it never caught the video card on fire, or if I told you that your computer's monitor would blow up if you use regedit on your windows pc to much would you believe me?

 

[40_LTDShooter]

Well gee I'm an IT specialist and while I agree I think they are pointless for 99% of users including myself, I do not see how it would damage the hardware. No mater how many ill informed sudo commands I ran on my linux box it never caught the video card on fire, or if I told you that your computer's monitor would blow up if you use regedit on your windows pc to much would you believe me?

"sudo commands"? Whats a sudo command? Do you perhaps mean "pseudo commands"?

 

[DocTauri]

I talked to a friend of mine about them and he works for a company as an IT specialist. He said task killers will kill the phone over time and here is why:

Your friend must be tier 1 support, and has no idea what he's talking about.

1. All programs are running for a reason, be it reading or writing. To kill the programs can destroy them.

The "reason" half of the programs are running is because I launched them. As far as I'm concerned, if I'm done with the app, I should have the option of cleanly quitting it without it running in the background for absolutely no reason.

As for killing them destroying them, that's BS. A program gets loaded from storage (sd, hard drive, etc) to memory. It runs in memory, and when you kill it, you kill it from memory.

Now, it's absolutely possible that an app could be writing to a file, and killing it could cause a short write (incomplete) thereby corrupting the data, but that's a far cry from destroying.

2. You just killed the apps. Prepare for lag and fast battery drain, because these apps are gonna all start back up at one time to finish what they were doing.

Not at all true. If I kill the browser, it won't start back up again until I launch it. SOME apps will auto start, but those are typically OS services and probably shouldn't have been killed in the first place.

I will say that some task killers are better than others, in that they shield you from the stuff you shouldn't be screwing with, whereas others are more like power tools, and let you kill things that you shouldn't touch unless you really know what you're doing.

3. Android is like Linux. It will shut down less used programs to keep the memory from getting low.

Android IS linux. I agree that it shuts down less use apps, my argument though is the min RAM setting is too low. Once it starts to shut down apps on it's own, I've already been lagging and stuttering for more than I care to deal with.

In the end, he said, get rid of task killers, unless you want to keep buying a new phone every few months.

I defer to my original statement, your friend has no idea what he's talking about. This is as bad as saying don't run Task Manager on your Windows machine unless you want to be buying a new computer every few months.

Tell your friend to go back to screen door sales.

Now, I realize that OfTheDamned and I may differ on this matter, and that's absolutely fine. She's got way more street cred here than I, but I think she'd agree that most of the reasons posted above for not killing apps are just ludicrous.

Doc

 

[pkopalek]

sudo is a terminal command for unix and linux.

And every app should have a quit or exit function.

Using Back when in an app usually does it. It's what keeps me sane when I'm not using a task killer.

 

[karib]

I always try to back out of an app to exit. BUT... what about when using the browser or Pandora??? Task killer is really needed (IMO) to close out of these otherwise my phone will run slower.

 

[DaveLevenson]

"sudo commands"? Whats a sudo command? Do you perhaps mean "pseudo commands"?

sudo is a command-line tool available to Unix and Linux users. It enables selected users to run selected privileged commands with the privilege of the super-user, rather than the privilege normally available to the user in question. The name of the command is a contraction of 'super-user do'. It is similar to the su command which enables a user to impersonate another user (or the super-user).

Task-killers won't hurt your hardware. What they may do is cause an application to exit abnormally, without closing files which may be open for writing or updating. This may cause the data stored in those files to be corrupted, causing the same application to malfunction the next time it is used. If the app is designed to save state information when it closes (such as user preferences or recent destinations, etc) this information may be left un-saved or corrupted. A well-designed application should have an exit button or something similar that allows the user to shut it down. It should exit cleanly and quickly when this button is entered.

 

[Frisco]

"sudo commands"? Whats a sudo command? Do you perhaps mean "pseudo commands"?

lmao!

(sorry)

 

[whewstoosae]

I will probably always use a task killer, I'm beyond OCD about things running when I want them to close. Plus, I enjoy keeping my phone running nice and smooth when it should be doing so.

 

[gruss]

Hahahahaa



I'm not linux expert, work in a winblows shop and just dabble, I just meant that as many times as I hosed the OS trying stuff that was beyond my technical prowess it never damaged the hardware.

 

[aleis]

I will probably always use a task killer, I'm beyond OCD about things running when I want them to close. Plus, I enjoy keeping my phone running nice and smooth when it should be doing so.

+1

advanced task manage FTW

 

[gm991]

I always try to back out of an app to exit. BUT... what about when using the browser or Pandora??? Task killer is really needed (IMO) to close out of these otherwise my phone will run slower.

If I task kill Pandora it locks up on my eris, so I use the quit button in the Pandora menu. When you do that it close's completly, I have even go into ATK after doing this and Pandora is no where to be found...

 

[textstev]

Pandora rocks. But I'm mean tasks killers are not bad if you ignore the right programs.

 

[teegale]

I use TasKiller Free because of the autokill on pressing end feature. I believe ATK and ATM both have autokill on the paid versions.

Out of the 3 which would you guys recommend?

 

[gm991]

Pandora rocks. But I'm mean tasks killers are not bad if you ignore the right programs.

This is true pandora rocks...
If I just leave me ATK installed but don't us it, is it like its not installed?
Think I might try not using it for a while. See if I notice a difference

 

[Ryobi]

Isn't Tennessee the state where brothers and sisters marry each other? Or is it Father and daughter? Anyway, about them there task kill-ers, that's some crazy stuff young man.....

 

[butthead007]

Isn't Tennessee the state where brothers and sisters marry each other? Or is it Father and daughter? Anyway, about them there task kill-ers, that's some crazy stuff young man.....

I actually enjoyed tn when I visited there. Not sure how that is relevant to the topic.

The it specialist is certainly special. And wrong.

 

[OfTheDamned]

Ok, first....@DocTauri Lol at "street cred". Sorry, that just struck me funny.

This may come as a shock to some, but I agree with a lot of things said in this thread. A task killer is not going to destroy a phone. It could possibly corrupt a program or two if they are killed off while in the process of writing information. This might, in theory, actually create more lag and make someone use of a task killer more. Which in turn could possibly corrupt the app again. This would of course start an ongoing cycle of repeated use and corruption.

The main problem with Task Killers is improper use. People killing off things that the phone needs to run. We have all seen the posts people have made about Sense shutting down on them and the culprit typically turns out to be some app that is auto killing a process that is required for Sense to run. Killing off the browser because you just finished using it shouldn't be that big of deal. That said, I have no idea what the browser is doing after I exit it. If you do, then go ahead and kill away.

In most cases backing out of an app or using the quit/exit option in the menu will close it out and not require the use of a task killer. The browser is an obvious exception, but it does close out on its own after a while if it is left on a static page. I actually had a friend challenge me on this today and I installed ATM on my phone to do some testing (both gone now). Of all the apps that I tested, the browser was one of only apps that continued to run after I backed out of it. The others were FeedR, SportsTap and WeatherBug which I all have use for running in the background for updates anyway.

Not going to get into the debate of whether people should use them or not and really that isn't my decision to make. If you have a need/want for one, then use it, but do it wisely and know what you are killing and why before you start.


@Those giving the OP a hard time:

Give the guy a break. Not everything his friend said was bogus, some was just a little (ok, a lot) over the top. Some of it may have been misinterpreted or lost in translation.

 

[fungalMonk]

This is true pandora rocks...
If I just leave me ATK installed but don't us it, is it like its not installed?
Think I might try not using it for a while. See if I notice a difference

I've been "testing" that the past little while. I'm not using ATK to kill anything lately, (except gTask 'cause I do see it still running and I know it has no syncing to do with my Google task list). I use it as a graphical ps command, basically. Gosh, sure would love to have a shell on the phone to just run ps or even top to see what's happening. After root? (or am I missing an app I'd adore?)

I've got enough to play with that I'm not overly concerned with root on my Eris, but when you've been a *nix user/admin for years, you come to rely on expected tools, especially when it does feel so nearly like the same environment even lacking such insight on the internals. This thing "just works" much like the boxen I've had various *nixen on in the last decade.