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Hi,
Since I read up on how the Android OS works I have not used TaskKiller or similar and the OS works great (MCR 2.8).
I think these task killer apps are redundant.
Anyone actually think they are needed at all?
It's true that the system will kill apps itself when the memory is needed, but a side-affect of having 192MB available to android, is that there will be a lot of open apps before that happens.
While some apps will become 'frozen'/ only taking memory and no cpu time, other will not.
Having these apps in memory, and using cpu while not needing/using those apps, will drain the battery faster.
In such a case, a task killer will be useful.
It may do more harm than good though, I missed an alarm because I killed the clock app once
short answer: no, not needed unless an app is draining the battery while the app is not used/necessary.
Theory is one thing, reality is another.
When I hit the 'kill all' button on taskiller my phone definatly speeds up, sometimes it's essential when an app hangs(phandroid has gone like this recently) or is rather resource heavy (like sky map) as the phone gets rather laggy untill it's taskilled.
yeah, what she said ^^^
If an app is still using cpu after you closed it, then (task-)kill dat motherf-
I've got Taskiller ocd! Less stuff running definitely keeps your phone running nice and fast so if I'm not actively using an app then I kill it. Although I do have all the important stuff on the ignore list so the phone doesn't crash... or I miss an alarm like E2K
I'm currently trying to decide which app I like best for the purpose, Taskiller Full or TaskPanel.
TaskPanel has more useful options like Auto-kill however I think it has a bigger memory footprint than Taskiller.
So I installed automatic task killer just to see if I noticed a difference. So it says it is freeing memory when I engage it. Great, more memory available seems to allow the phone to run smoother/quicker. However, give the phone a couple of hours and gradually the available memory on the phone lowers and lowers until it goes below 100mb and beyond. Engaging automatic task killer frees some memory but does not bring it back to its startup memory of over 150mb. I of course do notice that my phone begins to get "laggy" once I start to dip below 100mb. I guess my question is, "where is all my memory going?". Im not too concerned about using automatic task killer. I just want to know where my memory is going cause this is most certainly the cause of a laggy phone. A quick reboot and my phone is back to its highest point of 158mb and running nice and smooth. What gives? Also where are the other 150mb or so that the phone has available according to specs? If its all dedicated to the the android OS than why is the phone so laggy by the end of day? Sorry if its too many questions but im just looking for some insight into the memory management of the x10 and android. Maybe a 1.6 issue?
It's nothing to worry about. Unused memory is useless memory. It's *nix based so the memory in use isn't going to drain the battery or slow the system down. It manages everything by itself. By repeatedly killing tasks you're actually stressing things unnecessarily.
The only time you should kill all the tasks is when you know something is being problematic, before locking your phone when you have a suspicious app that doesn't always stop automatically, etc. Otherwise the Android OS takes care of this by itself.
I stopped using task killers months ago (except for when I lock my phone because of what I mentioned above.. programs keeping it from going into a deep sleep) and my battery easily lasts two days with periods of very heavy usage.
I only use a task killer to kill certain things when they cause problems, which is not often. Things I use often I leave in memory, they only get reloaded anyway.
Tbh if things are getting laggy that quickly you probably have an app that is misbehaving.
Sent from my X10i using XDA App
Thanks for the quick replies. Automatic task killer has already been uninstalled. Looking forward to the update with hopes that it helps with lag issues
Sent from my X10a using XDA App
Well that still doesn't solve the problem of badly written apps draining the battery. Often I've found that without a task killer my battery life has improved, but on occasion when I download a new app, I look at my battery usage a few hours later, and that app has managed to use 45% of my battery even though I used it for a few minutes. So then I just reboot
In conclusion, don't use a task killer, but keep an eye on the battery usage feature if you find that it has suddenly gone down (Settings -> About Phone -> Battery Usage)
I use Memory Booster. Quiet amazing.
hi i used to be same as you and always used talk killers
then i came across this article http:// www.ipmart-forum.com/ showthread.php?t=528674 (watch for spaces in the link)
since reading this i installed watchdog lite and i only kill a task if its overusing the system.
you can set it to notify you when an app is using more than a certain % of resources and its great then if i need to i just kill that app/process
pngface said:
Well that still doesn't solve the problem of badly written apps draining the battery. Often I've found that without a task killer my battery life has improved, but on occasion when I download a new app, I look at my battery usage a few hours later, and that app has managed to use 45% of my battery even though I used it for a few minutes. So then I just reboot
In conclusion, don't use a task killer, but keep an eye on the battery usage feature if you find that it has suddenly gone down (Settings -> About Phone -> Battery Usage)
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that doesn't work all the time is kinda annoying to keep checking your phone and see if the battery is alive or not
bongd said:
It's nothing to worry about. Unused memory is useless memory. It's *nix based so the memory in use isn't going to drain the battery or slow the system down. It manages everything by itself. By repeatedly killing tasks you're actually stressing things unnecessarily.
The only time you should kill all the tasks is when you know something is being problematic, before locking your phone when you have a suspicious app that doesn't always stop automatically, etc. Otherwise the Android OS takes care of this by itself.
I stopped using task killers months ago (except for when I lock my phone because of what I mentioned above.. programs keeping it from going into a deep sleep) and my battery easily lasts two days with periods of very heavy usage.
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K i seriusly need some answers how the hell do people come to know which app prevents it from sleeping? how can you figure out a bad application . does sleep here means when locks itself and screen goes blank? confused :S
I have kinda nooby question... i am using a phone with stock gingerbread and i am using an advanced task killer. I know a lot of people say that I shouldn't do it, but it just makes my phone a lot faster and smoother. As a noob, i have one question: is task killer really harmful to my phone and is it better for me to not use it? If you say yes, please provide me some specific reason why. Thank you ask much guys!
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
its not that bad... but u should not kill background services!
keep settings on safe... don't use aggressive mode
applications u know u use often for example- browser or music player... u can add to excluded section... currently im using ZDBox and it works perfect... it also has additional features that you will need... hope this helps
I only use the ATK to kill an app that's not responding well.
For example, when I was using CM7, sometimes my Google Reader app would hang and display a loading symbol for a long time instead of displaying my articles, and the arrow that shows transmission over the network wasn't displaying so I knew it wasn't waiting on data, I would use ATK to kill ONLY Google Reader. Then I could go back into the app and it would load very quickly.
But since I switched to an ICS ROM, I haven't had that same issue and haven't had a need for ATK.
Also, do note that it does take processing power, and therefore battery power, when your phone decides to restart any of those apps you are killing, and it will restart apps.
For a great explanatory article, see here:
http://androidandme.com/2011/11/app...lers-still-dont-give-you-better-battery-life/
and also the links in the phrase "(see here, and here, and here)".
So in short, they are not exactly "harmful" but they don't provide any real benefit if you "kill everything, every time."
It is a common myth that more RAM = better performance, and this is a result of the market being dominated by Microsoft for so long. Android does not equal a desktop OS. Free RAM literally does nothing. In fact, it is wasteful to have bunch of free RAM. Android manages RAM very effectively and aggressively works to ensure that you have sufficient resources to do whatever it is you want to do. If you notice an increase in performance with a task killer, it is because you have a misbehaving app. Watchdog is the only task manager I would recommend, all it does is watch for apps that are using an abnormal amount of resources and alerts you. Part of the Android experience is the emulated multi-tasking, or having several apps saved to memory simultaneously to facilitate ease of switching between them. An app in the background will not affect the performance of your device, it is not using any resources. Aside from that, if you end a task, it will usually just start right up again, using more resources, because that is how Android is designed to work.
So, I would say finding the misbehaving app is a much better option than a task killer. They were important in eclair, maybe even FroYo. But anything above that they are unnecessary.
i dont really believe in android"s app managmentbut task killers make it only worst IMHO
I have to agree with member devator22.
Android is not Windows. Android is basically Linux and Linux is using a different memory management than Windows does. (Although Windows has got a lot of improvements during the last years)
RAM which isn't used, is wasted! That's a fact.
So, if you run a specific application, some of its data my be cached. Linux is reporting this as "buffered" (you can see the amount by running the 'top' command)
There might be a more or less big chance to hit this cache. If so, the data is loaded much faster ( definetly > 10 ) than if it had to be requested from the file system.
By killing your application by a task manger you are releasing this buffered resources (actually you are forcing the OS to release it). In the worst case you are wasting your advantage of loading already cached data from the RAM. In the best case you are gaining nothing because your device has to load it from the file system anyway.
(sorry for my english )
Get watchdog!
/end
*just because nobody understands you, doesn't make you an artist..
Thank you so much for these replies! I really appreciate it! I decided to keep my task killer but not use it aggressively. I probably will use it to end apps that i really find it pointless. And also to the people who said android dies it's own task managing, you're right but wrong at the same time. When i didn't use my task killer, android did killed some apps in in order to launch more apps, but it left only like 10mb of 300mb, which i found little odd and also it mainly killed launchers which was very annoying.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Task killer will speed up your phone if you know what you're doing. Only kill tasks that you are familiar with...e.g. apps that you know you have launched and won't be using anymore. Those apps running in the background can slow down your device.
If I'm on ICS, its better to use the bult-in task killer, or download one from the market?
Guys, he's not saying he does it for the memory. He says the phone's smoother. I don't know whether this is true, but if there are background tasks performing operations that he doesn't want them to do, it's *absolutely appropriate* to kill them.
The flip side of that is that the applications will eventually be automatically started again, and that startup takes extra CPU time. As long as the process startup and process killing happens when the screen is off, I would think this could improve the responsiveness.
But I think on most people's phones, the background processes really don't use a lot of CPU...
I know by default even Gbs memory management isn't the best. The app priorities are a bit weird aand the launcher gets killed to easily. Running the v6 supercharger scripts and making the launcher hard to kill and fixing the priorities and changing the oom settings makes any from wicked fast
Sent from my PG86100 using xda premium
I am not rooted, so I can't do anything that involves rooting.
Sent from my Nexus S using XDA App
Instead of killing an app over and over again install something like Gemini App Manager and disable the app's autostart permissions. For example, dropbox and dropbox sync are set to automatically start at boot or when there's a connectivity change. I understand why they're set to do that but for my purposes I only needed them to start when I actually used them.
Having said that, I no longer use Gemini and have never used an automatic task killer. I think android (ICS) does a good enough job managing it's memory that I don't need to be anal about micromanaging it myself. I think it also helps that I'm not an appaholic. I'm very picky about what I install and will only keep an app installed if I regularly use it.
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Jinx Lumos Joke said:
If I'm on ICS, its better to use the bult-in task killer, or download one from the market?
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Built-In is much better
im on ics on my captivate and it runs beyond smooth
like stated before having free RAM with not do anything
android has a good way of muti tasking
Hello!
I installed ES task manager today on my new Nexus 7 and I was shocked to see that several apps are consuming 20mb+ of RAM when I don't even have them open, such as Titanium Backup, Facebook Messenger, PIE Controls, Auto Hide Softkeys. Even apps like YouTube, Gallery, Chrome, Currents and Hangouts seem to be running and using RAM and I have never opened any of these applications before. The actual app switcher shows that I have no apps open, yet ES Task Manager reports that 25% of my CPU is being used. All in all, an almost fresh install of Android idling is consuming 1GB of ram and 1/4th of my CPU time.
I have Googled this issue and discovered that many people are annoyed at developers who have background services, and sometimes even refuse to use an app that has such background services, but I haven't been able to discover why these background services use so much RAM (or even why titanium needs a background service), and I would really like to be able to just kill Chrome, Youtube, Currents etc because I never use these, but of course when I kill them in ES Task Manager they re-open within several minutes.
Can anybody shed some light on what's going on here? From what I can gather after searching around the forums, some people advocate the use of task killers, and some people also say killing all these services and apps just makes battery life even worse.
Edit: google+ is using 20mb of ram and I never even use it-- why!
If you are rooted you can use apps like Greenify to pause them temporarily until you run them. You can also use apps like Clean Master that will kill all task on every screen off. Ultimately you can remove these apps that are taking up a lot of ram as the best solution.
youngnex said:
If you are rooted you can use apps like Greenify to pause them temporarily until you run them. You can also use apps like Clean Master that will kill all task on every screen off. Ultimately you can remove these apps that are taking up a lot of ram as the best solution.
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Wow, didn't know something like greenify existed, thank you!
The last week or so since I got my HTC One Max, I have been slowly configuring it and setting it up to my tastes. On my previous phone, an HTC Rezound, I used an app called Clean Master to manage the phones ram, and Battery Doctor to extend its battery life. I tried an application called Battery Guru on my Max, but it actually drained the battery faster while the phone was not doing anything. After uninstalling it, my battery life seems to have shot upwards. I have not re-installed Battery Doctor. I have read the following things about these battery saver apps over the last few days:
1. Some say the applications are not needed and you should not use them, especially if they include a task manager. The logic was that Android was designed to have multiple apps in memory all the time, and closing them, then opening them again from scratch, uses up the battery.
2.Others have said just the opposite. They claim the applications greatly increase battery life. If you read the reviews on the Android Market about these two applications, that seems to be the case.
Both of these applications I have used get rave reviews from the many folks that have used them. Is the benefit they are seeing just imagined? Do the applications actually work? Is it also possible that they work for some and not others, since there are a lot of models of Android devices out there?
Most things that are ram "cleaners" are just giving you a slight point in time speed boost. Your ram will fill up again (as it should). Most so called battery doctors cripple your phone to extend battery life (think extreme power saver on the Max). What you want is something that blocks the applications that you do have running from performing activities in the background that you dont need at that moment ( think facebook looking for your location even when not using it just so it will know it faster when you open the app).
I use a combo of firewall to block most apps from using the internet (radio takes a lot of battery) and greenify which hibernates the app while keeping it in ram so it brings me into the app where I was before.
mikekoz said:
The last week or so since I got my HTC One Max, I have been slowly configuring it and setting it up to my tastes. On my previous phone, an HTC Rezound, I used an app called Clean Master to manage the phones ram, and Battery Doctor to extend its battery life. I tried an application called Battery Guru on my Max, but it actually drained the battery faster while the phone was not doing anything. After uninstalling it, my battery life seems to have shot upwards. I have not re-installed Battery Doctor. I have read the following things about these battery saver apps over the last few days:
1. Some say the applications are not needed and you should not use them, especially if they include a task manager. The logic was that Android was designed to have multiple apps in memory all the time, and closing them, then opening them again from scratch, uses up the battery.
2.Others have said just the opposite. They claim the applications greatly increase battery life. If you read the reviews on the Android Market about these two applications, that seems to be the case.
Both of these applications I have used get rave reviews from the many folks that have used them. Is the benefit they are seeing just imagined? Do the applications actually work? Is it also possible that they work for some and not others, since there are a lot of models of Android devices out there?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try greenify
Sent from my HTC One max using xda app-developers app
Free ram is idle ram. Having a lot of ram usage isnt a bad thing... Don't know how many people think the opposite. Now if it gets too high then yea its an issue when opening new apps but this issue died with gingerbread in all reality. Some would argue task managers even died with froyo.
Sent from my HTC0P3P7 using xda app-developers app
Thanks everybody! I have installed Greenify, and removed Battery Doctor and Clean Sweep, and my phone is running great! I like it so much, I have put Greenify on my other Android tablets. No more battery saving apps or task managers for me!!
The trick is to properly manage the apps that you use.
The problem with task killers is that some apps that you kill will simply "respawn" themselves automatically in the background. Killing apps that do this just means your phone is constantly closing/opening the app again and again which is worse than not killing it in the first place. You will just have to experiment and check which apps respawn after killing them and avoid having the task killer auto-kill those apps, or uninstall those apps.
You also have battery saver apps that try to manage turning certain features on/off like WiFi, GPS and Blutooth. The most efficient way of managing this is to manually disable those features when you don't need them. Having an app do this for you means that app now has to be running all the time to manage those other features, which itself will ironically increase battery usage.
Avoiding as many apps as possible that need to constantly run in the background to perform it's function. These mostly include instant messenger apps or other apps that regularly check the internet for updates in the background. Either avoid them or if possible increase the delay between how often the app checks for updates/info. The Greenify app will allow you to "suspend/pause/freeze" specific apps when they are not currently on your screen. This keeps them from performing any activity in the background, and will help save battery if used on apps that would normally be doing tasks in the background. The downside is that if that app is suppose to be doing something while in the background, it won't be doing that anymore...like checking for updates, chat messages etc...
Keep screen brightness on automatic, so you don't waste power on a bright screen when in a darker environment.
These should be more than enough tips to help you better manage your battery.