Help me understand the "don't ever use task killers" argument

[mrdroid]

The point is you dont save battery life, this is in your head.

This is all I'll say... I had my Droid for 4 months and got an average of 13 hours of battery life between charges. After installing Apollo (first one I tried) I got over 48 hours of battery life between charges in the next 2 months. After lots of tweaking over several months I'm close to 4 full days of battery life.

The haters can hate all they want but results are results. Use them if you want, don't use them if you don't want.

The fact is Android should and claims to handle memory well but it doesn't. It actually handles application management and memory management very poorly.

 

[zerosouls]

Can we merge this topic with the ongoing http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...5-i-dont-understand-task-killer-argument.html

It seems like I can't stop seeing these two show up in the New posts...

 

[gonnadie4thegov]

Okay...I am cautiously weighing in here....as the opinions seem very strong on both sides of the ledger.

I've had my Incredible for almost two weeks now - my first smartphone. After a few days I called VZ and told them I wanted to return it - because battery life was absolutely the pits. It would barely make it six hours on standby.

When I took it to the store to return it, a very knowledgeable VZ rep (who also owns an Incredible) helped me download ATK and change a few other settings. After talking with him awhile I agreed to give it another try. After leaving the store, I went home, charged the phone and it rewarded me with 24+ hours of standby time. Since then, I am typically getting 30+ standby hours on a charge (this is with the original 1300 mAh battery).

In all fairness to this forum, I also turned off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, & GPS. Right now I don't need to have those apps running.

The bottom line is - I really don't know if ATK solved the problem, or whether turning off the unneeded functions solved the problem, or a combination of both. For those of you who are technically talented - (I am technically challenged :icon_eek I can understand that you want your Droid to operated correctly and without unnecessary stuff interfering with the software. But for folks like me...without a lot of technical background, I just want it to work, as I love the phone.

I would be interested in others opinion's here as to whether I could really live without ATK....if you look at the reviews for this model phone on VZ's website (more than 1500) the overwhelming majority of reviews list negative comments regarding battery life. Right now I have ATK set to kill apps whenever the screen is darkened, and I also have an ATK widget on the home screen that I can "one-tap" to kill running apps. What is perplexing is that many times when I dont have anything open, I'll tap it and it will tell me it closed 3 or 4 apps. So, not only is Android opening apps I'm not using, it's not closing them either! Arrgghh!

Is there something us non-tech folks are missing....????

P. S. I still have a couple of weeks to upgrade to the Droid X if I want to.

1. VZW reps are retarded and 98% of them know only what verizon has told them.

2. Wfi and GPS scans are constant and take up a bit of battery. So does having the bluetooth turned on when there is no reason to.

3. They are reopening because you are fighting androids natural process. It is reopening the last apps because they are supposed to be sitting idle in the backround. So you are wasting battery by first closing them then making android restart the program and put it back into idle where it was.

This exact thing has been said so many times in this and all threads about this topic.