PLEASE READ: Do NOT worry about Apps running in the Background

[Matth3w]

That would be an uncommon circumstance. I get tons of email a day on my gmail account and have tons of battery life. You would be what I refer to as a "power user" not normal user.

GMail and Email are different applications...

My point was that gmail is pushing as well, constantly checking.

How old is your droid? Has the battery been conditioned yet?

GMail is only pushing when you get an email. The email application is pulling regardless.


As for me, despite everyone saying not to, I use a task killer. I don't really care what people say about not worrying, because I can notice the phone lag after going all day opening various programs that never completely shut down. Whether they are actively using memory in the background when they aren't supposed to, or whether the lag is due to freeing up that memory and re-allocating it to something else, I have no clue.

That being said, I also have a ton of exclusions. Anything related to the phone I have excluded. I tested this by ending all apps and seeing which ones auto restarted, then excluded those apps. So even things like corporate calendar and alarm clock (even when I am not using the alarm clock it restarts for some reason) are excluded.

Right now my exclusion list looks like this:

- Shapewriter Keyboard
- SetCPU
- Documents to Go
- Alarm Clock
- Messaging
- Apps Organizer
- News and Weather Widget
- ChompSMS
- Beautiful Widgets
- Settings
- Pure Calendar Widget
- Corporate Calendar

 

[rjm5151]

I was told by a verizon rep that i needed to use task killer and certain apps like sport score apps were slowing down my phone, and this was his explanation for my keyboard becoming unresponsive.

 

[Dijitalx]

The only thing that I've noticed with my Droid slowing down is when my SD card is near capacity.

I saw a video on youtube which I can back up that showed a guy using the audio feature and navigation feature on his phone as well as a few other apps. The battery killer was the display. It uses a majority of the battery life. I think they need to work on the power consumption of the display.

I unplugged my phone 6 hours ago and the batter is still only one 'tick' down, because I was sleeping and the display was off. It is now consuming 1/4 of my batter power. Followed by ... phone idle? and cell standby.. which I assume is the phone's "i'm waiting for a call to be received" function. Those three things total are consuming 59% of my battery.... followed by Wi-fi, android OS, and android system... the other tiny portion is ALL of the other apps i have running. FML, TFLN, beautiful widgets, google, browser, etc.

I think as a general development statement, all apps should come with a 'close' option. Very few have this and I don't understand why.

 

[jbernard703]

GMail and Email are different applications...

My point was that gmail is pushing as well, constantly checking.

How old is your droid? Has the battery been conditioned yet?

GMail is only pushing when you get an email. The email application is pulling regardless.


As for me, despite everyone saying not to, I use a task killer. I don't really care what people say about not worrying, because I can notice the phone lag after going all day opening various programs that never completely shut down. Whether they are actively using memory in the background when they aren't supposed to, or whether the lag is due to freeing up that memory and re-allocating it to something else, I have no clue.

That being said, I also have a ton of exclusions. Anything related to the phone I have excluded. I tested this by ending all apps and seeing which ones auto restarted, then excluded those apps. So even things like corporate calendar and alarm clock (even when I am not using the alarm clock it restarts for some reason) are excluded.

Right now my exclusion list looks like this:

- Shapewriter Keyboard
- SetCPU
- Documents to Go
- Alarm Clock
- Messaging
- Apps Organizer
- News and Weather Widget
- ChompSMS
- Beautiful Widgets
- Settings
- Pure Calendar Widget
- Corporate Calendar

I must agree. There is a noticeable lag after the phone has been on for hours with apps opened in the back. After i close them the lag suddenly goes away. Maybe it is all coincidence, I don't know, not a linux expert. Motorola or Verizon obviously felt compelled for some reason to pre-install ATK on my droid.

 

[Jonny Kansas]

I deleted the App Killer...it just leads to OCD : )

AGREED! Haha! I read a few posts where people commented on this SAME topic and how app killers are no good, and so I uninstalled ATK and disable Home++'s app killer, and have noticed NO change!

Droid DOES not let itself get bogged down with stuff you're not using!

 

[ZX-10R]

Uninstalled the killer yesterday and everything's all good i actually used less power phone has been on since 5:45 am Eastern time.. (12hrs since unplugged) i have 30% power still... Streamed Radio for about 4hrs some web browsing, tecting, talking also downloaded Flan gallery 2.1 and deskclock..

Thanks Op.

 

[windstrings]

I have GDE cube installed and I installed ATK as one of my first apps..... it does seem to clear things up a bit when I uninstall everything running in the background.... but like cereal said..... later on, it slows the phone down to try and fire them back up.

While searching for another task manager "killer"app, I wanted one that "auto" kills so I don't have to keep killing apps throughout the day that keep rising from the dead.

So I knew I wanted to uninstall ATK before installing another do I did just that.

To my surprise my phone seems to be instantly responsive and flows like fluid motion when using cube.

I thought it worked good before but did notice occasional hesitations "only a few milliseconds" as the cube would twirl around.

While in crowded traffic, trying to activate my "traffic" app, weather app, maps etc I too noticed bits of lag here and there as they were usually closed before I opened them.

Now that ATK is uninstalled, I must say things work better.
I suspect when a DEV is working on an app, he's doing it without ATK running at the same time!... in other words, his only concern is being compatible with the Android system, "not" with an ATK program.

I"m not sure why ATK would be a problem since once you activate it and let it do its thing, it should lay down and be quiet and not slow the system down "I would think".

If it was real time monitoring such as those that do "auto" kill, I could see why there may be lagging.. but not from an ATK type app that just executes killing other apps and then does nothing till you run it again?


Anyway, I challenge anyone that was in my shoes who has had ATK running for so long they forgot what it was like without it, to uninstall it and see whats up.....

If you can only remember how ATK sped things up when you first installed it, remember since the update, things are much smoother, GDE is much smoother and advanced, as well as most apps that not very long ago were virgin to the Android system.

ATK was my last suspect for problems as I thought it was the guardian all this time..... LOL!... does that mean its a trogan?

Kill the killer "just for fun" you may be surprised what you find!

I'm very hesistant about considering to install another ATK type app.

I think the only way to do it would be to also kill the ATK after you let it run.

But on the other hand, after a fresh reboot, there are tons of apps that run.... and in spite of that.... my Droid is smooth as butter "without" ATK.

 

[Matth3w]

The problem isn't the task killer, it's the user. If you aren't excluding system apps like the calendar, GMail, messaging, etc...then YOU are slowing your phone down, NOT the task killer. If you exclude the stuff like I mentioned, you aren't slowing the phone down by using the task killer WHATSOEVER.

 

[windstrings]

The problem isn't the task killer, it's the user. If you aren't excluding system apps like the calendar, GMail, messaging, etc...then YOU are slowing your phone down, NOT the task killer. If you exclude the stuff like I mentioned, you aren't slowing the phone down by using the task killer WHATSOEVER.

Could be wrong, but I'm assuming nearly everybody keeps thier gmail, calendar and messaging going..... hence task killer slows down the system based on what you said...

 

[Matth3w]

If you exclude things like GMail and all those other things I listed a few posts above, then when you hit end all you are only killing apps that shouldn't be running, like games, WiFi tether, etc.

 

[windstrings]

If you exclude things like GMail and all those other things I listed a few posts above, then when you hit end all you are only killing apps that shouldn't be running, like games, WiFi tether, etc.

Thats how I assume most people run it.. thats the way I did..... I left gmail, messaging, and calendar running "excluded" and killed most everything else.

Getting rid of task manager still helped.

Im just wondering if killing it too would be a good way to run it.

Most of the folks that really understand linux and Android are not crazy about task killers..... I"m always know windows and it makes sense in my head to kill what your not using.

Firefox for instance takes a little longer than explorer to come up...why?
Explorer gets to cheat and uses systems in windows that are already running as part of its platform so when you open it.. half of it "as it were" was already running.

I suspect Android works somewhat the same way......

But I'm not a programmer.

 

[kyleboone]

ok cool, i have the ES task manager and it tells you whether stuff runs in the background or not, i was wonder why so many random things were running that i didnt open...but now it all makes sense!

thanks!

 

[kyleboone]

So if they are running in the background, what does it mean if they are "empty"

my task manager says if they are in the background, or empty. If i leave the empty ones running with it eat up battery and/or the cpu%?

 

[cosmonaut]

Well Verizon has wrongly suggested the app killers importance. I may delete my app killer. BUT, If I just keep the app killer loaded it really doesn't do anything bad to the phone while it is loaded on it, right? So if I choice not to delete it and just not use it, same thing?

 

[The Electrical Guru]

I happen to have downloaded the Estrong Task Manager and its widget lets you see how many apps are running right into the widget. I notice that the system information keeps the dialer up....and no problems but since they make a nice folder APP I added their task manager also and it seems to be working fine.