Understanding how Froyo multi-tasks

[mghokie7]

I bought my first smart phone 3 days ago, the droid 2 global, and am very impressed with it! I am just confused about how to manage application to maximize battery life. I am running the juice defender app and advanced task killer to try to increase battery life. I charge it over night then i have to charge again around 3pm every day so far. I have been using the phone heavily (games, apps, and internet) since i got it, but the battery life is still the only negative aspect of the phone.

If I open any application, lets say the browser, and while I am surfing the internet decide to make a phone call. I hit the home button and proceed to make the call. I know the browser keeps running in the background on the last page I was viewing. After the phone call has ended, I forget about the web page I was looking at. The browser continues to run in the background, but will the operating system automatically put the browser "to sleep" or do I have to open the advanced task killer and manually kill the browser?

 

[LifeIsABeach]

The best way to increase your battery life is to remove the juice defender and advanced task manager apps.

 

[mghokie7]

The best way to increase your battery life is to remove the juice defender and advanced task manager apps.

How would removing both of those apps help improve battery life?

 

[trook]

It takes more juice to constantly kill tasks and have them restart than to just let them be, google: task managers on froyo, and you will find a thousand pages all saying how uneccesary task managers are. Its not like a pc where you need to kill processes, android will decide when to kill what task.

Sent from my DROID2 using DroidForums App

 

[drew]

There are many threads on this site regarding the use of Task Managers. They are generally frowned upon, and can wind up causing more harm than good on your phone. Android does its own memory management quite well (as far as an OS goes). That's not to say some apps don't have memory leaks, or are memory hogs. The OS will stop processes (like your browser) that have no activity after a period of time.

Juice Defender probably fits in that same category. I haven't used it. I will say that I just made the jump from the Droid 1 to Droid 2 Global. I've noticed that I'm not particularly impressed with the battery life of the phone. With that said, I've been playing around with the settings in Battery Manager (found in Settings) and have been tweaking it to get decent results (a moot point since I'm ditching the phone and going to the Thunderbolt if it gets released in the next 12 days).

Your screen, and the amount of energy it takes to keep in nice and bright is going to be the biggest use of battery. If it's constantly on, and you're constantly playing games, you can expect the battery to take a hit. The battery manager in Settings will show you exactly what takes up the most. In my case for today, voice calls took up 28% of the battery.

 

[kptphalkon]

There are a lot of speculative myths about Juice Defender.

If you are in an area with very bad/no signal (like my work building), the cell radio will eat up a LOT of power trying to get signal. Juice defender, at the least, can turn off the 3G radio and in my experience cut this drain by AT LEAST half.

In a normal medium/strong signal area, you may only notice 15-25% battery savings with JD.

Task killers though, just stay away from them