Database Users

Back button does NOT end applications!!!

So, after installing Task Manager and opening it I had 31 applications running in the background! Yup, you read that right, 31!!! I ended them all and started playing around. I would launch and app, hit the back button and then go into Task Manager and there it was, still running. I launched several applications hitting back aftewards and they were all still running. I even tried hitting home aftwards and still running. Oh, and I had some apps running twice!!! WTF!?!? Looks like I found a major flaw in the new 2.1 OS.

This is normal android behaviour.
Apps are only shut down when the phone runs out of memory, however if the app is not doing anyting it will be paused and not use any battery / cpu.
And since the nexus has 512MB RAM it can have a LOT of open applications
If it is a background app (like im) it usually has an exit button in the menu.

Apps always run on android if you don't end them with a task manager.

Ya, normal behavior. The app actually has to intentionally end itself when you press the back button for that to really end it. I wouldn't worry about it, though. Apps in the background tend to use very little RAM and CPU.

Not sure why people are freaking out about apps running in the background... This is normal and Android does an amazing job of freeing up memory by killing apps as NEEDED.

Hmmmm, guess I never looked at it that way. I do notice it gets a little sluggish when all of that is running in the background. I'm just used to my MT3G. I've NEVER seen that many apps running at once.

setzer715 said:
Hmmmm, guess I never looked at it that way. I do notice it gets a little sluggish when all of that is running in the background. I'm just used to my MT3G. I've NEVER seen that many apps running at once.
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try two and two-thirds the amount of RAM and that would explain how you get so many apps running lol.

david1171 said:
try two and two-thirds the amount of RAM and that would explain how you get so many apps running lol.
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Ha-ha, good point!!!

From my experience the apps never close it is set to idle and is stored in the phone memory therefore decreasing startup time and allowing for a better multitasking experience but on all other previous android devices there wasn't as much memory so only a few apps could run at a time before the memory would be needed so something would get closed.

You're used to having 37.5% of the ram the Nexus One has
Now here's the question: does having 31 apps open affect battery life?

Paul22000 said:
You're used to having 37.5% of the ram the Nexus One has
Now here's the question: does having 31 apps open affect battery life?
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Click to collapse
It depends on the applications. If they just sit quietly when suspended (in the background) and don't do anything, they will have no impact on battery life (because their threads will never schedule/run). If they continue to do work while in the background, that will have some impact, however, unless they hold a wakelock (something they need the "keep phone from sleeping" permission to do), they will have no contribution to battery consumption while the screen is off and no other apps/services hold wakelocks.
In short, "it depends."
The menu / settings / about phone / battery use panel tries to give you as much information as possible about what apps/services are consuming your battery.

martijnve said:
This is normal android behaviour.
Apps are only shut down when the phone runs out of memory, however if the app is not doing anyting it will be paused and not use any battery / cpu.
And since the nexus has 512MB RAM it can have a LOT of open applications
If it is a background app (like im) it usually has an exit button in the menu.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes. Traditional multitasking (WinMo, BlackBerry) phone OSes will not close an application (or program, on WinMo) until you tell it to close, or it decides to close itself. This is a resource hog, and results in the freezing up or running painfully slowly that we have come to expect from those devices. The iPhone always runs fast because it ALWAYS closes an app--no multitasking whatsoever--so it never runs out of resources and slows down. It "pauses" the app, then closes it, so when you open it, it resumes right where it left off, as if it were open the whole time. The downside is nothing gets done in the background--which is why awesome apps like Locale or Screebl won't run on iPhone. Android is the best of both worlds. It leaves apps running until it NEEDS to close them. When resources run tight, it pauses apps just like the iPhone, so it stays running fast, but as long as you don't overload the system, you can run background apps. And background services will stay running.
Paul22000 said:
Now here's the question: does having 31 apps open affect battery life?
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Click to collapse
I'm sure it does some, but with that monster of a CPU, and as little power as apps use when they're sitting in the background not doing anything, I'm guessing it is a negligible difference. But that's why I love Advanced Task Manager's auto-end feature.

i lol'd -----------__________----------------

When you have 31 applications running, is there a hardware key that you can press (perhaps with a third party software) to show those which are running, and to switch to anyone of them instantly without resorting back to the application menu? Also, does this same tool let you shut down an active tasks in order to conserver memory and battery life? I understand that a long press of the home key only shows the last 6(?) application launched but not necessarily the currently active tasks.
On my jailbroken iPhone, I'm used to be able to double click the home button to show all active tasks, and there I can switch to or terminate anyone of them. While running an application, I also have the option of long pressing the home button to end it directly so that it does not continue running in the background. If I do a normal home press, the application will continue running in the background, and I'm presented with a screen which lets me jumps to any of the desktop in order to launch new applications.
I hope I can have the same level of convenience here.

All of the applications in the backround are essentially in hibernation - it is part of the way Android manages the RAM. I think it's great.

Advanced Task Killer Questions please

Hi
Ive just got this app (really to save myself some battery time)
On launching for the first time it presents me with a whole bunch of stuff including my clocks
Now i'm sure this maybe a pretty dumb question but if i kill the htc clock App will that stop the time and weather updating correctly? (i have my weather set to update hourly) and also if i kill any app like K-9 or Peep (that i have an update schedule set for) will it stop that schedule till i manually launch the app again or will it auto launch when it reaches the sheduled update time?
Sorry for the (potentially) stupid questions
Cheers

The only thing you're going to achieve with using a task killer, is lowering performance and causing even worse battery drain. If that's what you want to do, fine, but otherwise, I wouldn't bother if I were you.
Here's why:
Android's memory management is nothing like Windows Mobile. Applications you've finished with are MEANT to stay in memory until they really are completely finished with, and just because YOU aren't using them, doesn't mean the phone has. If they've been inactive long enough, or some other program needs the RAM, Android will tidily close them down.
If you close them prematurely, then Android will have to load them back up again, so that whatever was using said program's services, can continue to function. This noticeably affects phone performance, and puts an extra load on your battery. Do you REALLY want to do that?
I'm not using any task killers, and my phone runs great, and battery is up to 2.5 days.

Hmm interesting, i might try that, im killing all instantly and repeately, thanks for the tip

FloatingFatMan said:
The only thing you're going to achieve with using a task killer, is lowering performance and causing even worse battery drain. If that's what you want to do, fine, but otherwise, I wouldn't bother if I were you.
Here's why:
Android's memory management is nothing like Windows Mobile. Applications you've finished with are MEANT to stay in memory until they really are completely finished with, and just because YOU aren't using them, doesn't mean the phone has. If they've been inactive long enough, or some other program needs the RAM, Android will tidily close them down.
If you close them prematurely, then Android will have to load them back up again, so that whatever was using said program's services, can continue to function. This noticeably affects phone performance, and puts an extra load on your battery. Do you REALLY want to do that?
I'm not using any task killers, and my phone runs great, and battery is up to 2.5 days.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats correct.
I installed it on the phone, and the battery was empty the same night
Uninstalled it, and all works fine now.
Greetz.

would an app like task panel work?
you can add apps that are system apps etc to the ignore list and have apps such as games on the force to kill list or is it just best not to have any task killer apps installed at all?
its strange that there are so many task killer apps and its bad to run on your device. There must be some reason as to why there is an app for this purpose?

ragmanchu said:
would an app like task panel work?
you can add apps that are system apps etc to the ignore list and have apps such as games on the force to kill list or is it just best not to have any task killer apps installed at all?
its strange that there are so many task killer apps and its bad to run on your device. There must be some reason as to why there is an app for this purpose?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They exist, because people think memory management on Android works like it does on Windows Mobile. It doesn't, and never has. Think if it like the so called "memory manager" tools you can get for XP that claim to be able to free all your RAM and speed up your system... Every single one of them is nothing but a placebo designed to part you from your cash, and often end up CAUSING problems, just like task killers on Android do.
Avoid them.

FloatingFatMan said:
They exist, because people think memory management on Android works like it does on Windows Mobile. It doesn't, and never has. Think if it like the so called "memory manager" tools you can get for XP that claim to be able to free all your RAM and speed up your system... Every single one of them is nothing but a placebo designed to part you from your cash, and often end up CAUSING problems, just like task killers on Android do.
Avoid them.
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Click to collapse
Guess thats a good enough reply lol

task killers can work fine, but you need to know what is running and what is using it.
for example, if you have the music widget on the homescreens, then the music player process will be opne in the background.
likewise friendstream will keep people, facebook and twitter open in the background.
if you kill those processes, they will just get opened again.
As long as you are careful, using task managers will not decrease battery life, you just need to know how to use them properly. randomly killing everything in the background is NOT the way to do it.
and you should never close clock if you want your alarm clock to actually go off!!

Might be worth making a list of what apps should be ignored and what apps can be forced killed?
When i had an app killer installed, i used to only force kill games and sat nav apps, the rest i asked it to ignore but after reading this thread, i decided to delete the app killer app =)

Ive put a bunch of stuff like clock, weather, Peep and facebook etc on the ignore list and have used the task killer to only kill off frivolous apps like Spark (for xbox friends) streamfurious, photos etc...Nothing Major!
I unhooked my phone from the power at 7:30 am on the 13th April, its now 16:36 on the 14th april and it still has 30% of the juice left, and i always have wifi and mobile data connection on too...phone is always left on with facebook connecting ever 4 hrs and peep once a day and mail set for every 2 hrs (besides which i do check and update them manually a couple of times a day)
I'll try all this without task killer installed and test how long the phone can run before charging
As you say, it could well be a combination of the battery coming up to speed and a placebo effect.
However, surely it cant do more harm than good to kill an app like Spark !
However, im no Phone Genius so im sure someone will soon tell me that im completely wrong
But so far so good....like i said, ill test things without task killer installed

I've stopped using the task killer now and my battery life has improved very noticably.

oursoul said:
I've stopped using the task killer now and my battery life has improved very noticably.
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im not so sure about this.
im using a task killer when i want to close the browser or something using internet, as we all know internet drains a lot of battery and even if the browser or market is in the background it still probably has some active connections = draining battery

cez10 said:
im using a task killer when i want to close the browser or something using internet, as we all know internet drains a lot of battery and even if the browser or market is in the background it still probably has some active connections = draining battery
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you want to close fast the browser or any app, you should have a try at taskOS and launch it with the search key whenever you want...

Binned this app in favour of Juice defender, my new battery saving app of choice, seems to be working as it should too...nice

profete162 said:
If you want to close fast the browser or any app, you should have a try at taskOS and launch it with the search key whenever you want...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
but then that works pretty much like a task killer
can anyone correct me about the apps i.e. browser using internet while not active(in background) is this true or not? of course having the sync/updates turned off

Task killers can be handy for those times when apps seem to have crashed but aren't forcing close. for example, i've had times where ebuddy just doesn't want to even try to sign in. Task kill it. Try again. all is well. And last my internet browser wouldn't let me click any buttons. Again, killed it - restarted - all is ok.

I've had to use such an app countless of times due to unwanted/unneeded apps running, hanging FCs and black screens, checking/closing net related or sensor using apps, and numerous times when 300KB apps wouldn't install citing 'low memory' when I have more than 70MB free, but it was the RAM being near full causing FCs in apps like Market, and halting the installs. I only use Androids built-in TaskPanel widget for this though. Everything routine is set over to the ignore list so that I don't accidently hit and close that (single hit closes the app). Additionally I use this app to check and to switch to an opened application that is running (when it's not in the recent list).
Sent from my HTC Desire using the XDA mobile application powered by Tapatalk

profete162 said:
If you want to close fast the browser or any app, you should have a try at taskOS and launch it with the search key whenever you want...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the route I've taken naturally. I'm using jkAppSwitch on my longpress search key, mainly used for switching but can be used to kill problem apps.
Full task killers are being proven to be useless on the Desire.

I would recommend using an app that monitors the cpu usage(watchdog etc.). This way your can see which apps put a drain on your phone.

Thank you for the information. But I do notice a considerable improvement in battery power with Advanced Task Killer.
I hope someone can provide me an answer.

This may help your battery life.

Today I had been experimenting with my battery life again and stumbled across this.
If you download advance task manager from the market. *NOTE* It is a paid application or *NOTE* This is illegal but you can download an .apk but again it is illegal and I am not encouraging you do it. *NOTE* You can purchase it and return it within 24 hours with your money back.
Step 1- Get advance task manager.
Step 2- Go into your home system and go into your default home or your home system.
Step 3- Now choose a screen in the home. Eg: 1,2,3 etc...
Step 4- Keep your finger tap'ed on the empty screen or somewhere empty in the screen. You can also just press the menu button and tap *ADD*.
Step 5- Choose widgets and find advance task manager.
Step 6- Now when you tap the widget icon, it will terminate all your applications.
Step 7- It will then direct you to a choice for your home application/s.
Step 8- You can just press lock and not choose your home and it will stay draining very little battery.
*Note* I do not guarantee this to work but it worked for me since I had my phone on the lock where I had a choice of home screen since 3:00 PM and it is now 6:00 PM...
3 hours and still full battery.
I have also previously managed to keep the battery up for 3 days and in the 3 days I was left with 15 percent battery.
I will post images if you people are having trouble *JUST PM ME OR POST BELOW IF YOU WANT IMAGES*

Appreciate the tip but since the inception of the Android OS this was one of the first and biggest tips amongst all of the community. It's nothing new. The Android OS actually does a damn good job of killing apps by itself. Unused RAM is useless RAM. It's a *nix based system.
The only time where this is good is when you have a stray app that's using CPU when it opens in the background when it shouldn't. Especially when it's keeping things awake. I only advise that you use this before locking the phone intentionally, and when you'd like it to go into a deep sleep.
I use task killers only when I'm putting my phone away for a while. Works better than when I used task killers. I'm also mindful about the apps I install and I uninstall and reinstall when need be, format my phone occasionally (I am an extremely heavy user) and defrag my SD card because of the heavy usage.

bongd said:
Appreciate the tip but since the inception of the Android OS this was one of the first and biggest tips amongst all of the community. It's nothing new. The Android OS actually does a damn good job of killing apps by itself. Unused RAM is useless RAM. It's a *nix based system.
The only time where this is good is when you have a stray app that's using CPU when it opens in the background when it shouldn't. Especially when it's keeping things awake. I only advise that you use this before locking the phone intentionally, and when you'd like it to go into a deep sleep.
I use task killers only when I'm putting my phone away for a while. Works better than when I used task killers. I'm also mindful about the apps I install and I uninstall and reinstall when need be, format my phone occasionally (I am an extremely heavy user) and defrag my SD card because of the heavy usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree but this worked for me and I recommend trying this. Also I agree with everything you have said and sometimes when I am out somewhere I tend to keep the phone in a deep sleep but I do not want to miss any calls or texts happening to me so I do this.
Appreciate what you have told me as well.
Also what good does formating do? (NOT SAYING IN AN OFFENSIVE MANNER, I AM JUST CURIOUS)

zm4 said:
I agree but this worked for me and I recommend trying this. Also I agree with everything you have said and sometimes when I am out somewhere I tend to keep the phone in a deep sleep but I do not want to miss any calls or texts happening to me so I do this.
Appreciate what you have told me as well.
Also what good does formating do? (NOT SAYING IN AN OFFENSIVE MANNER, I AM JUST CURIOUS)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bongd is absolutely correct in what he says, the whole android system is designed to manage apps automatically, therefore while an app may appear on the task manager, they do not necessarily waste battery as they are sitting "idle"- that also means that an app will load up quicker when you go to open it, rather than if you kill the task.
Also my other point, and this is the big one, killing tasks can not only corrupt an app from working correctly but also it can cause instability to your system in the long run (because you are also killing certain tasks which are system processes) thus you notice bugs ion your phone and required to flash firmware again.
I've used advanced task manager and task panel side by side quite religiously for a while, yes it is faster and battery life does SLIGHTLY improve but trust me your phone doesn't like it.
Sent from my X10i using XDA App

zm4 said:
I agree but this worked for me and I recommend trying this. Also I agree with everything you have said and sometimes when I am out somewhere I tend to keep the phone in a deep sleep but I do not want to miss any calls or texts happening to me so I do this.
Appreciate what you have told me as well.
Also what good does formating do? (NOT SAYING IN AN OFFENSIVE MANNER, I AM JUST CURIOUS)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Formatting is good because just like a computer, things can get f***ed up for no reason. You can have all the correct settings but things don't happen as anticipated. It happens with any complex electronic devices, so this is why I recommend it every few months but this varies depending on how intensely you use your phone.
I use mine like crazy and tweak the hell out of it. I do it about once a month, but then again I have cell phone OCD.

The task manager helps to close apps that constantly keep connecting to the Internet, it's not about freeing up RAM it's about using the Internet connection

Some "apps" are some bad hogs when it comes to the phones recourses
Some "apps" are quite some hogs when it comes to the phones recourses.
Internet connection, Syncing, Updating ads and so on.
Some of these "bad hogs" also keep running "at full speed" in the background.
They have no whatsoever routines to save energy/recourses once loaded (background or not).
Designers of these "bad apps" don't care about battery-life, or they simply have no whatsoever knowledge/experience about mobile devices and how an application should behave on a such device.
If one are the kind who downloads lots of "cool" applications from the market, a task-killer can help allot, depending on how many "recourse hog" application one have installed and loaded in the background.

SysGhost said:
Some "apps" are quite some hogs when it comes to the phones recourses.
Internet connection, Syncing, Updating ads and so on.
Some of these "bad hogs" also keep running "at full speed" in the background.
They have no whatsoever routines to save energy/recourses once loaded (background or not).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah but we don't have any app that tells us which app is using the battery and data connections right? sure the android OS tells us the battery usage, but data?

A app to stay away from is eBay it hogs cpu time and constantly refreshes in the background, my batt goes from 2days down to 8ish hours when the eBay app is installed
Sent from my X10a using XDA App

tookieboy said:
yeah but we don't have any app that tells us which app is using the battery and data connections right? sure the android OS tells us the battery usage, but data?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
System Panel can do this

Taskkiller stuff is not welcomed by my X10. When I kill all the apps , sometimes my connection to my operator goes down. I don't know how many necessary process' this taskkiller stuff kills as well.. I avoid "kill all" , instead I kill the ones that I'm sure that they're using internet and cpu in vain. Wish all the mobile developers use the close() method , then we won't be facing that kind of problems..

Alternatives To Task/App/Ram Killers????

Many people say it's harmful using app killers, especially on android as it may interfere with important system resources or close important system files and can do harmful damage in the longrun such as errors, things not working, etc...
When you open various programs such as file manager, picture gallery, etc you then see a list of all running programs in system/task manager.
Many of these running programs are ones you have recently used and are draining ram/cpu/battery.
Is there not ANY safe app to use that will ONLY close apps that YOU have used?
There must be some app out there that closes/kills open apps, not system or phone apps but only the ones you have installed and used?
This could be a ram killer or maybe a simple app which is not dangerous and will safely close running apps not needed.
Looking forwards to seeing what others recommend.
Thanks in advance guys,,,

kanej2006 said:
There must be some app out there that closes/kills open apps
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, there are, but android just restarts them after they have been closed (froyo only)

panyan said:
yes, there are, but android just restarts them after they have been closed (froyo only)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Names please of a good app that kills ONLY programs you open, not system files.
What if I was to install an appkiller, but instead of having it on autokill, I was to manually click apps I opened and kill them?
Surely this way there is no danger as I'm only closing selected apps, not system files?

kanej2006 said:
Names please of a good app that kills ONLY programs you open, not system files.
What if I was to install an appkiller, but instead of having it on autokill, I was to manually click apps I opened and kill them?
Surely this way there is no danger as I'm only closing selected apps, not system files?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The point is, even after killing your own apps, most of the time froyo will restart them
I very much like ES' offerings - ES File Explorer and ES Task Manager. They're both free, give em a birl.

You can install Advanced Task Killer (free) and there you can perfectly select which apps to close and which not... still I rarely use it
for example your homescreen widgets are always unchecked when killing tasks, so unless you check them, they won't be killed...

Hmmm, ok.
What is the BEST way to preserve & save battery/cpu & free up as much ram as possible without harming/interfering with the phone??
When I used to use the task killer app it would consistently give me around 400-424mb free ram.
Without the app killer I would only have around 100mb of free ram since all the programs are running in the backround.
So to all you experts out there, what can I do or what options do I have in which I can safely free up as much ram as possible and safely close running apps not needed when not using the phone?
I just want the best and most effective way to make my battery last longer.
I'm having to charge my phone every day, it struggles to get through the day even when hardly used.
Looking forwards to hearing some expert opinions based on the above.

kanej2006 said:
I'm having to charge my phone every day, it struggles to get through the day even when hardly used.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's definitely a problem there but you're not going to find it chasing free ram. I have approx 20Mb free ram at the moment, the phone hasn't been rebooted for at least a week but I'm easily getting through 2 days with light use. Task killers / app killers are not the answer, (in froyo at least) free ram is wasted ram.
The programs that are 'running' in the background are not actually using CPU resources unless they have a service running (see the eBay app/service for an example). Your best bet is to check the running services (settings/applications/running services) and battery usage to work out what process is hogging the CPU time. Also check your sync settings, though I'd imagine you've already tried that.

christonabike said:
There's definitely a problem there but you're not going to find it chasing free ram. I have approx 20Mb free ram at the moment, the phone hasn't been rebooted for at least a week but I'm easily getting through 2 days with light use. Task killers / app killers are not the answer, (in froyo at least) free ram is wasted ram.
The programs that are 'running' in the background are not actually using CPU resources unless they have a service running (see the eBay app/service for an example). Your best bet is to check the running services (settings/applications/running services) and battery usage to work out what process is hogging the CPU time. Also check your sync settings, though I'd imagine you've already tried that.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe it's the anipet fish aquarium live screensaver...

Systempanel is good, I use it to stop a bad app thats using to much memory..you should never kill your apps with froyo, the OS wasn't designed like that, thats the whole point of Android, it looks after the apps perfectly well by itself, systempanel is just there as a....just in case method.
Saving battery power is a common misconception, Task killers actually get in the way of Android handling memory management as intended.....a pointless app to have with 2.2 which actually drains you battery quicker.
The LCD screen is the biggest drain on battery power, turning the brightness down, stop using a live wallpaper, turn off wifi, bluetooth, GPS ect....
With all that said the 1250mah battery is just not powerful enough to run this device period...but then most of us knew this before we bought the phone..we needed a 2000mah battery really, its just a lipo battery and can be easily increased, maybe next year we will see an improvement in the new smartphones.

kanej2006 said:
Maybe it's the anipet fish aquarium live screensaver...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I hope you're joking

Black1982 said:
I hope you're joking
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LOL, well some people do say that live wallpaper kills battery...

Task killers

What are your opinions on task killers, I know that they cause a bit of battery drain since it relaunches apps. But do they actually speed up your phone?

unitz0mbie said:
What are your opinions on task killers, I know that cause a bit of battery drain since it relaunches apps. But do they actually speed up your phone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They're pretty worthless and probably do more harm than good. You won't see any speed up.

Since lollipop theyve been pretty redundant.
I just use greenify nowadays along side Amplify and im getting days out my battery

Task killers kill tasks that afterwards turn around and re-enable themselves anyway. There's more battery wasted on the killing of the task then actually saved by leaving the OS manage the system.

Also killing running tasks may end with data loss or corruption.

Not exactly a task killer, but I really like Chainfire's "Recently". It allows you to automatically keep your recent app list free from clutter.
Also using gravity to "Kill foreground app" on long-press-back is a must have feature. When you accidentally hit the wrong app and pandora starts blasting in a meeting, being able to quickly kill the app is essential.

jdk2 said:
Task killers kill tasks that afterwards turn around and re-enable themselves anyway. There's more battery wasted on the killing of the task then actually saved by leaving the OS manage the system.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Prevent Running (xposed) can remedy this.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/xposed/modules/mod-prevent-running-greenify-supporting-t2757969

A while back, I used Clean Master. It gave you that placebo effect that it was actually doing wonders for your phone. But really, it may speed up your phone for a little while, but then it just feels like normal and you end up noticing the junk you just cleaned built up again. They're pretty much worthless, other than a one time use to delete some obsolete stuff, because Android runs itself fine. I recommend apps like Amplify, Powernap, etc if you want to save battery.