How do you actually REALLY close out a program/widget/app...?

You should NOT, it's not how Linux (What Android is) works, if you really do press back repeatedly until back at home screen

pressing back until you get to the home screen will not completely close the app.. You need to download a task killer/task manager.. I use Advanced Task Manager, and it comes with a widget for your home screen that acts as a "1 press kill all tasks" button... It's nice, this will also help you save your battery, a good bit..

Make sure you setup the ignore list to tell the app NOT to kill/end any of the apps that came with the phone (htc sense, mail, clock, music, peep, etc..), or you will have to wait for htc Sense to restart for about 10-20 seconds everytime you kill/end it..

For the love of god, task killers make NO SENSE ON ANDROID! They are linux based, talk to ofthedamned please, she can explain this better than I.

deman89 said:

For the love of god, task killers make NO SENSE ON ANDROID! They are linux based, talk to ofthedamned please, she can explain this better than I.

Click to expand...

Some applications do not exit, even if you completely avoid the home button and only use the back button.

Specifically in the case of the browser (and some other apps, too), it is far faster to kill the app than it is to navigate backwards through a series of previously visited pages.

Task managers have their place - if you use them manually (no auto-kill), and you only kill apps (not services or system processes).


eu1

Someone said task killer, so I came running.


Hi redfirefly and welcome to the forum.

You have stumbled upon a pretty hotly debated topic around here. There are some that believe a task killer is required for an Android device to operate and others that believe that they are not all that necessary. These 2 side go back and forth in post after post arguing about this over and over. Some have a live and let live attitude on the whole idea, while others believe that everyone should do what they are doing.

Now, I could go into a really long "book" of an explanation of task killers and what they can and do do to a phone, but I have a feeling that nobody really wants to read that right now. What I will do instead is offer some links for anyone who feels like reading. The one in my signature as well as this link.

Just so you know, my whole issue stems from people telling others that they have to have something on their phone. The fact of the matter is, if your phone is running fine right now then you shouldn't be messing with anything extra. Sort of a "If it isn't broken don't fix it" thing. The only person that can determine what needs to happen with your phone is you. Don't let any of the rest of us bully you around about it.

Hope you are enjoying your phone.

erisuser1 said:

Some applications do not exit, even if you completely avoid the home button and only use the back button.

Specifically in the case of the browser (and some other apps, too), it is far faster to kill the app than it is to navigate backwards through a series of previously visited pages.

Task managers have their place - if you use them manually (no auto-kill), and you only kill apps (not services or system processes).


eu1

Click to expand...

For those instances you want something like Kill Everything or Force Close Button

Many people here seem to be confused and think that you dont need a task killer app for the Eris...

YES you do.

People will argue that Android is Linux based and that Linux reallocates memory as needed. This maybe true but it is this EXACT process that slows down the Eris and causes even more lag than you already have from the outdated old CPU.

This is proven because anyone can confirm that once the Eris reaches 30mb of memory the entire phone starts to LAG even more than normal and under multitasking the phone becomes ridiculously slow at times all due to this memory reallocation process. This has been 100% confirmed.

This is the MAIN reason why you need task killer apps, to keep your Eris memory free so that apps load fast instead of having the Eris reallocate memory and THEN load the app into memory.

Some people simply cant understand this....this has been 100% proven.

Phones like the Nexus One are so fast that this memory reallocation process does not noticeably impact its performance.

That just means you have to use more CPU CYCLES to restart these apps! This is not WINDOWS or WINMO! Just read some of the links above.

deman89 said:

That just means you have to use more CPU CYCLES to restart these apps! This is not WINDOWS or WINMO! Just read some of the links above.

Click to expand...

Does not matter. Starting apps is not the main cause of lag. While the outdated CPU is a huge factor in why the Eris is so slow, the memory reallocation process is the root cause of heavy lag once your memory reaches < 30mb. This is why you NEED task killer apps to kill unused/unwanted apps out of memory.

This has all been proven.

Please cite your sources, I am interested. But the point is Android knows when you reach a certain threshold to start killing off background apps.

I only use a task killer after I improperly close out of several apps... usually because I was in a rush or I got interrupted in the middle of a task/game. I also use it first thing after I boot up my phone, because tons of processes are running that I never friggin use... like Footprints.

Also, if you use the Dolphin browser, you can long press the back button and it will give you the option to Quit or Clear Cache & Quit. But the stock browser is a pain to properly exit.

deman89 said:

Please cite your sources, I am interested. But the point is Android knows when you reach a certain threshold to start killing off background apps.

Click to expand...

You are correct. And it is this exact process of memory reallocation via androids that causes heavy LAG once your memory reaches < 30mb. This has all been proven.

for stock browser open a new window close the old one and back once ends it

Where? please cite your sources!

WOW! i did not expect my suggestion to turn into an all out brawl lol.. I guess i sounded kind of pushy telling them to use a task killer.. It was simply a suggestion, I personally use one, because it reduces lag, and saves battery life.. i've tried without it because of this exact argument, but this is going to be a never ending battle lol..

Task killers, to me, help my device run smoother and more quickly, but I may actually utilize more of the device than those who are against task killers.. The more you learn about the device, the more you tend to use, and this is when a task killer comes in handy. Yes, though it is not NECESSARY to have one (because it is linux based), it does help on occasion(againt, just my opinion).

deman89 said:

For the love of god, task killers make NO SENSE ON ANDROID! They are linux based, talk to ofthedamned please, she can explain this better than I.

Click to expand...

I mean...do you really know linux? Have you used linux before to say that android can do so-and-so because it IS linux?

I've tinkered with Ubuntu and it's variations, fedora, and a couple of other random ones, and using what i've learned about operating systems (Just because it handles memory differently from windows doesn't mean it does it more effectively), not every program closes correctly on here. I fault the phones/this particular distro from excluding an actual 'close' or 'end' button.

I'm pretty sure that the back button is the closest thing you can get to closing an app if you're not using a task manager, and it's not even really closed. It's moved to being either idle or in the background. And while there is no memory moving to it for it to run, that app is still eating up RAM because it is still open in one way or another.

That's just my 2 cents.

OfTheDamned said:

Just so you know, my whole issue stems from people telling others that they have to have something on their phone. The fact of the matter is, if your phone is running fine right now then you shouldn't be messing with anything extra. Sort of a "If it isn't broken don't fix it" thing. The only person that can determine what needs to happen with your phone is you. Don't let any of the rest of us bully you around about it.

Hope you are enjoying your phone.

Click to expand...

I agree.

erisuser1 said:

Some applications do not exit, even if you completely avoid the home button and only use the back button.

Specifically in the case of the browser (and some other apps, too), it is far faster to kill the app than it is to navigate backwards through a series of previously visited pages.

Task managers have their place - if you use them manually (no auto-kill), and you only kill apps (not services or system processes).


eu1

Click to expand...

I also agree with this. The only app that I've seen that actually closes (via the back key long press) is Dolphin. Every other app I use on my phone stays open no matter how I close it, hence the reason I use ATM.

deman89 said:

For the love of god, task killers make NO SENSE ON ANDROID! They are linux based...

Click to expand...

Then why do desktop Linux apps have "X" buttons in their windows or "Exit" or "Quit" in their menus ? One reason apps aren't closed normally (or have an actual 'exit' command) is to give the appearance of them opening faster when a user opens/runs them a 2nd time (and they're in fact already running).

Along this topic, why do some think that hitting the "Back" button helps ?

hallstevenson said:

Then why do desktop Linux apps have "X" buttons in their windows or "Exit" or "Quit" in their menus ? One reason apps aren't closed normally (or have an actual 'exit' command) is to give the appearance of them opening faster when a user opens/runs them a 2nd time (and they're in fact already running).

Along this topic, why do some think that hitting the "Back" button helps ?

Click to expand...

I used to always use the Home key when I was done with a program. I could consistently count on seeing a history of every program I had used in the list of running processes when I pulled up ATK. Now that I use Back to quit, ATK will only show me apps that have widgets which cause the program to remain running. There are a couple of exceptions, like the native messaging app--but I want that one to remain open because I use it so damn much.

With regards to overall lag, I have noticed no difference between repeatedly hitting the back button to exit an app, or simply hitting Home when I'm done with it. I'm not running a task killer, I used to, but the phone does seem to run better when left to its own devices.

What I have noticed is that the home screens tend to lag more, the more pages (and widgets probably) you pile on there.

I've also read the white paper (developer.android.com) on how Android manages apps, and I see no reason to use the back button over the home button.

Some apps do offer an actual exit or close option (Dolphin and Pandora off the top of my head), and those will actually end their own processes, but the reason it's not obvious how to truly quit an app is because you're not supposed to worry about it.

It's a beautiful system*, really, and once I got over the whole "omg i need to see exactly what's running all the time omg" feeling, it's almost liberating and I feel like the phone just facilitates doing a million things at once on it with barely a slowdown or two.

* = when it works.

There's always that one app that's glitchy or something and constantly eats CPU and memory in the background, and in that case, a task killer would come in handy. But for the apps I do use, I know for a fact that none of them are misusing CPU/RAM, and thus I don't need to babysit my processes with a task manager. (my awake time generally is >30% and usually around 12-15%)

P.S. Yes, being "linux based" has nothing to do with the way they've built their process manager. If you wanna get technical, iPhoneOS is BSD-based [Mac OS X], which is UNIX-based/compatible, of which Linux is a open-source clone of (and compatible with as well). Yet the iPhone works nothing like Android (with regards to multitasking or lack thereof)

OfTheDamned said:

Someone said task killer, so I came running.


Hi redfirefly and welcome to the forum.

You have stumbled upon a pretty hotly debated topic around here. There are some that believe a task killer is required for an Android device to operate and others that believe that they are not all that necessary. These 2 side go back and forth in post after post arguing about this over and over. Some have a live and let live attitude on the whole idea, while others believe that everyone should do what they are doing.

Now, I could go into a really long "book" of an explanation of task killers and what they can and do do to a phone, but I have a feeling that nobody really wants to read that right now. What I will do instead is offer some links for anyone who feels like reading. The one in my signature as well as this link.

Just so you know, my whole issue stems from people telling others that they have to have something on their phone. The fact of the matter is, if your phone is running fine right now then you shouldn't be messing with anything extra. Sort of a "If it isn't broken don't fix it" thing. The only person that can determine what needs to happen with your phone is you. Don't let any of the rest of us bully you around about it.

Hope you are enjoying your phone.

Click to expand...

She brought this up awhile ago and I decided to give it a shot. I haven't been using as task killer for over a week now with no problems. The OS manages memory fine on it's own. It doesn't need the user killing processes when they don't need to be. I just back out to the home screen. They do stay running in the background but it doesn't use up any more battery or anything. I don't even have any lag.
Good luck

As a qualifier, Linux is all I use at home. Force Kill only needs to be used if a program locks up.