Help Disabling tasks from launching?

[huangman]

Hi all HTC owners and fans.

I have got my desire for a couple of weeks now. A fantastic device with a great if a little irritable OS that needs some love and care to achieve perfection

Anyay, I'm one of those obsessive people who don't like stuff just launching and running in my OS (be it my Windows, Linux, Android, Symbian or anything else) without a good reason. I always disable any non-essential processes and applications that may potentially slow down the system and/or drain the battery.

I have only installed a couple of apps to my Desire and did not do any "illegal" stuff with it (no rooting, hacking or any other syetem modifications).

I use Astro file manager and task viewer and this is what I see just after freshly starting the phone in Astro Process Manager:

- Open Source Plugin Manager - 21.23M
- Dialer - 35.02M
- Clock - 21.88M
- Google Partner Setup - 19.89M
- BlueTooth Share - 20.52M
- FM Radio - 20.11M
- Calendar - 21.98
- People - 20.93
- Android System - 48.88M
- Swype - 25.87M
- Footprints - 22.37M
- Updater - 20.27M
- Mail - 23.23M
- HTC Message Uploader - 19.86M
- My Uploads - 20.64M
- Google Mail - 21.52M
- Settings - 23.39M
- HTC Sense - 47.62M
- Messages - 23.30M
- ASTRO - 37.26M

Now isn't that a little TOO MUCH? Especially since I haven't used any of those apps/gadgets when starting the phone and neither do I use any of my "homescreens" to place anything there (except one where I put only links that I use most often).

After I kill all apps that I think are not essential I have ony about 6 of them running (Dialer, Android System, HTC Sense, Swype). I try to kill off "messages" but it restarts almost immediatelly. The system still runs perfectly well without all this stuff running in the background.

So what is the reason for all this stuff launching? Isn't it a good idea to keep the memory empty rather than load a bunch of apps that I'm not going to use?

There is that "startup task killer" app but I wonder if there is any way to set which tasks should start/not start upon phone start-up? Something like Windows process manager utility allowing to manually disable any start-up tasks you think are not necessary. That is getting quite annoying.

 

[dunbad]

I just had a look and ive got about the same as you. But ive recently un installed task killer, and have just let my phone do its item thing for the past few days to see if I can notice a change in performance or battery. Do you see though that your cpu usage is like 0 percent for virtually all of them. Does this make a difference? The only thing I do now is go into applications settings after starting the phone and I turn off a couple of the running services. Theres 2 calender settings, I turn off the non connectivity one. I turn off google talk aswell. Doesn't seem to effect the phone too be honest. And since leaving all those apps and tasks open in the background, im still seeing zero percent cpu on all of those settings within astro on those apps our processes. Android system obviously uses some.

 

[huangman]

I guess you're right. It doesn't use any CPU which is the primary battery-killer. However it should still take extra time to load all of that upon the phone start-up. I still don't get why all those apps have to load even if any related functions (sync, updates etc.) are disabled where possible. I read in this very forum that Android 2.1 is a smart OS at managing its memory but still it's a little odd that there is no way of choosing what apps should be launched/disabled. Something I would expevy from an iPhone OS but not Android where things can be customized as you please.