Help How well do task killers really work?

[mbell75]

I have had Advanced task killer installed about a week and its not really improving battery life noticeably. Also, when I look at open apps, random things like Sprint Navigation is open most the time, I havent used it in weeks and if I keep killing it, how does it keep opening? Not really sure this thing does too much.

 

[tatonka_Hero]

Remember, it's not necessarily "open" in the sense of the word that "open" means on Windows.

http://androidforums.com/sprint-htc-hero/26997-task-managers-your-hero.html

Just because your task killer shows that it's using memory, doesn't mean that it's using CPU power. Android fills up available memory in order to be able to multi-task. Here's the most defining part of that link, but I suggest you read the whole thing, multiple times to get the grasp of using task-killers

The second point I want to make is that your reported free memory is not accurate. Not a single task killer on the marketplace properly reports usable memory for your device. Remember the first point? The one in bold? Good. That's why you don't see accurate reporting of free memory on your device. Your Sprint Hero is a Linux based device and is designed to multitask unlike WinMo and the iPhone. One of the ways Linux speeds up multitaksing is to eat all the memory that it can at any given in time. It stores as much as it can of any process in memory so it can be accessed faster for you. This leads to it appearing that you have a very low amount of free memory when in reality you do not. Bits are unloaded whenever anything else is called and that happens at the same speed as it would if the memory were technically empty. An example of this is my workstation at the office. On boot, after login, running nothing but a terminal application, my workstation shows between 12.5GB and 14GB RAM used (yes GB). After starting a media player, two browsers (chrome and firefox), my usual terminal application, tweetdeck, whistlr, pdigin, Eclipse PDT, and usually MS Office 2k7 via Wine I can go back to the same terminal window I opened at the start of the session and see between 12.5GB and 14GB RAM used. Nothing has changed at all and I have apps running that are known to be heavy on memory usage. The only time I see performance drop on my workstation is when I hit the disk IO to heavily. While that much RAM isn't synonymous with the Hero it is a good example.

If a process isn't actively using the CPU then it isn't affecting your battery or degrading your performance. Unlike WinMo a long list of running tasks doesn't mean much on Android. The apps that are actively using the CPU are sleeping. They have resident bits in RAM and only the bare minimum needed to keep them alive isn't swapped in and out of memory. A sleeping app is not accessing RAM, CPU, or network. It can run in the background for days without having any affect on performance. So the list of "running" apps you see with a task killer isn't a list of active apps but rather apps waiting patiently and being behaved until you need them and then they can snap right into being active for you.

Because of the way Linux manages RAM using a task killer when you don't have any apps misbehaving will degrade your performance noticeably. This is because everything has to be loaded back into RAM when you start your application again. The "sleep" described above is negated when you kill all of your applications thinking that you will gain performance by "clearing" out RAM. So while in the WinMo world you wanted as few apps running as possible the same is not true in the Android world and your Hero is an Android device! It's not an easy mindset to change. I am a Linux geek for a living and I still grabbed a task manager on my first day and started killing running apps. I had to get my head around my phone actually being Linux. I can imagine for someone who doesn't come from my background that this is even harder to grok.

 

[mbell75]

Remember, it's not necessarily "open" in the sense of the word that "open" means on Windows.

http://androidforums.com/sprint-htc-hero/26997-task-managers-your-hero.html

Just because your task killer shows that it's using memory, doesn't mean that it's using CPU power. Android fills up available memory in order to be able to multi-task. Here's the most defining part of that link, but I suggest you read the whole thing, multiple times to get the grasp of using task-killers

Thanks. The 2nd and 3rd paragraph summed it up great.

 

[tatonka_Hero]

Thanks. The 2nd and 3rd paragraph summed it up great.

You bet

 

[i VTAK]

I installed one within the first week of having my Hero because a Sprint salesman told me I should. After reading these forums for awhile I decided to stop using it and didn't notice a difference either way.

 

[305Cane]

I installed one within the first week of having my Hero because a Sprint salesman told me I should. After reading these forums for awhile I decided to stop using it and didn't notice a difference either way.

yea this bothers me a lot. i had a friend they told the exact same thing to and had to convince her how to properly set up the phone. hell they guy never even told her to update the firmware for the messaging fix that drained battery. they told her to get a task manager and close stuff. absurdity at its best.

 

[scottmbolt]

Task killers are horrible. Android managers tasks the correct way. Task killers are battery hogs.

 

[i VTAK]

Still no task killer for me and I get a full day on my battery, with heavy use.

 

[t1jordan]

Remember, it's not necessarily "open" in the sense of the word that "open" means on Windows.

http://androidforums.com/sprint-htc-hero/26997-task-managers-your-hero.html

Just because your task killer shows that it's using memory, doesn't mean that it's using CPU power. Android fills up available memory in order to be able to multi-task. Here's the most defining part of that link, but I suggest you read the whole thing, multiple times to get the grasp of using task-killers

I agree with you and thanks for the information. I am using a task killer. (Estrong) The problem I have is dialing a number and the buttons lag. That kills me the most. When Im using my Estrong Task Manager I dont experience this at all. Im going to try and run with a task killer again and compare the performance. I just know with my task killer, my performance is noticably better.

 

[GibsonD90]

I too have an "advanced task killer" and thought it would save battery life, but after I read on hear that it is best to not use it, I have stopped in the last few days (I used to kill things as soon as I stopped using them).

I haven't seen any drop in battery life after I quit using it. I think battery life only is drained while using the apps maybe (like a game or something) but not just at the home screen after exiting the games...

 

[sanchez1980us]

I think I might just delete my advance task killer

 

[KitsapAndroid]

I think I might just delete my advance task killer

Holy dead thread revival! But yes, you should delete it. It most likely causes you more problems than it solves.