Debate the pros and cons of a task killer

[Matth3w]

I uninstalled Advanced Task Killer at the response from someone in another unrelated thread. Rather than hijacking that thread...

Since uninstalling (and maybe I'm just imagining this) but after awhile it seems like my phone gets a little sluggish.

The argument was that when you shut down apps you are shutting down system apps as well therefore slowing the phone down. My counter to that is, they seem to restart right away anyhow, so it might lag it for like 10 seconds max but outside of that you are probably killing other unnecessary apps (especially if you hit home instead of back to exit an application without thinking about it).

What are your thoughts?

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

I have empirical data only - I deleted ATK after a couple of weeks and my phone is as fast as it was before I added all these other apps. Our phones are all so different now with different apps, so just because my phone responds well with no app kill, does not, imho, mean it will for everyone.

 

[takeshi]

There are a ton of existing threads for this.

 

[modified]

Here is my take on this...
I do believe that the task killer increases phone speed and performance, but at the cost of increased crashing. From tests and from what I read it in the short term increases speed but may end up closing processes that are vital to android, resulting in many more reboots. I would rather have the phone work a little sluggishly rather than having it reboot often. What I would love most however, is a 2.1 update on the browser chopping.

 

[pandroid]

heres the truth:

your phone runs apps, when you close an app, its usually not completed killed, but just hidden from view, still in the memory. the reason for this is if you want to run it again, it takes a lot less time to open since its already loaded to the RAM. people argue that android does a great job of managing memory, which i agree with.

task killers, such as ATK or Advanced Task Manager, which is what i use, allow you to kill off selected processes. now if you do this and you go to run an app that would have been in memory, but is now killed, itll take the app longer to load up.

so yes, task killers do slow your phone down

BUT

what happens if you have an app thats slowing your phone down do to a memory leak or maybe a process loop. what do you do? you hold the power button and reboot. that is if your phones responsive enough for that, if not, battery pull. thats where a task killer comes in extremely handy. all i do in times of slowness is i hit the ATM widget and it kills off all the apps i have not selected for exclusion from my autokill list. BAM! my phones just as responsive, if not more, as when first booted up

(this was a quick write, no proofing, it might now make much sense)

 

[adrynalyne]

In a perfect world, then applications in the background would not cause issue.

This, is not a perfect world however, and we aren't running regular Linux. Our apps are running in a virtual machine.

An interesting thing I found on wikipedia under Android limitations....

Garbage collection will slow down programs that make too many memory allocations so that Dalvik can keep a pool of free memory. This may noticeably affect responsiveness.[93]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)

Anyway,

Its been my experience that using a task killer unwisely, hurts performance, breaks features, etc. Knowing what to put on your ignore list for a task killer makes the TK an efficient and quick way to get performance back when a program or program(s) are bogging the phone down. I have mine setup so it ignores my widgets that update, my messaging, email, and calendar apps, and I do NOT have it run in the background or on startup.

When my phone starts to bog down, and lets face it, ALL phones do at some point, I go in, and hit the end all button. It kills off whats not ignored, INCLUDING itself, and I get that fresh dou...erm, boot feeling again

 

[mikes]

Ho hum. Googletard.

 

[vearix]

I just use it to close my games that seem really resource intensive. Everything else is kept running

 

[2001400ex]

How come when this discussion comes up, no one mentions battery life? Am I the only person who left imap weather running in the background and woke up to a dead battery?

If my computer were plugged in, I can agree with the managing memory issue. However, I use a task killer to keep apps from draining the battery in the background.

 

[dezymond]

this is exactly why i have ATK, to kill apps that use background information and to make sure the browser is really closed or something like that.

The forum seems to be split 50/50 on this issue, but like all these kinds of situations, it's personal preference.

 

[Martin030908]

This poor issue has been beaten so badly

 

[nkcavs23]

i used one. but then i stopped and honestly its no different.

imo its no fun worrying to kill apps all the time

 

[pandroid]

short answer:

use it only when you need to use it!

k, lock thread

 

[Tillers_Rule]

Use it for a week and see how your phone performs. Turn it off for a week and see how your phone performs. Go with which ever setup you prefer