Related
I was messing trying to figure out which is the correct method to close apps, back and home do the same thing, holding HOME (i just found out) brings up a list of recently used apps, but i can't figure a way to properly close them. I have Advanced Task Manager to close them now and again but I don't want to keep it running all the time.
Is there any proper way if the app doesn't provide an exit function?
Because an app is on that list does not mean it is not closed. That list is just the history of the last 6 apps you used.
A lot of people say that you do not need to worry about whether or not an app is fully closed because the software manages that to ensure that it has enough free memory. I don't know enough to know whether that is correct or not.
peterc10 said:
Because an app is on that list does not mean it is not closed. That list is just the history of the last 6 apps you used.
A lot of people say that you do not need to worry about whether or not an app is fully closed because the software manages that to ensure that it has enough free memory. I don't know enough to know whether that is correct or not.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, sorry, the apps I'm referring to are shown by the Advanced Task Manager, I merely found the Recent list when trying to find a way to exit apps.
I sometimes have 15-20 apps in there filling up my RAM even on startup things like Shop Savy will be there twice and Photoshop.com.
They, amongst others don't seem to provide options to prevent them starting at boot so I simply uninstalled them, but all the running apps do severely affect the performance when it's filling up.
I have been experiencing the same problem.
Advanced Task Manager lists a whole load of apps that start on bootup and each one of those doesn't have an option to disable this.
After a while (about 3 hrs or so) of using my Hero I am down to about 40mb of RAM which if I don't use Advanced Task Manager to kill unused apps my Hero begins to lag big time.
On the Android it is better to leave them resident in memory than stop them, unless they are 'background' processes and there is something wrong with them (a bug) making them slow down your phone.
Don't judge your Android on amount of free memory left; if anything, the the less memory left over the better as it means the memory is being used effectively to make it nice and speedy.
Processes aren't allowed to consume CPU cycles/consume battery/slow your phone down when they are not focused; the exception is background processes which need to keep going, like the music player etc. What's more, if an app is not focused then its state is preserved allowing your phone to free up its memory when needed; its memory effectively becomes 'cache' allowing it to restart quicker if it happens to have stayed in memory.
So don't worry about wiping an app from memory; for many apps there is simply no distinction between closing it and switching away from it; as soon as you switch away from it it's as good as closed; it's not slowing your phone down or taking up any memory that couldn't be freed instantly if needed, but if it is lucky enough to stay in memory it will re-open quicker.
On my experience, if you press the back button to exit an app, then the app is closed properly, running the code in the app that will release the memory and objects. This is the best way.
The only app it will not work on is the browser as the back button will send you back through the history.
Try it...
MercuryStar said:
On the Android it is better to leave them resident in memory than stop them, unless they are 'background' processes and there is something wrong with them (a bug) making them slow down your phone.
Don't judge your Android on amount of free memory left; if anything, the the less memory left over the better as it means the memory is being used effectively to make it nice and speedy.
Processes aren't allowed to consume CPU cycles/consume battery/slow your phone down when they are not focused; the exception is background processes which need to keep going, like the music player etc. What's more, if an app is not focused then its state is preserved allowing your phone to free up its memory when needed; its memory effectively becomes 'cache' allowing it to restart quicker if it happens to have stayed in memory.
So don't worry about wiping an app from memory; for many apps there is simply no distinction between closing it and switching away from it; as soon as you switch away from it it's as good as closed; it's not slowing your phone down or taking up any memory that couldn't be freed instantly if needed, but if it is lucky enough to stay in memory it will re-open quicker.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I understand how and why this should be true, but for me it doesn't seem to be, if my memory falls to less than 40 the phone becomes increadibly unresponsive, I get crashes and have to wait forever for it to do things like open the phone. Immediately after killing all with advanced task manager it goes back to normal.
barryallott said:
On my experience, if you press the back button to exit an app, then the app is closed properly, running the code in the app that will release the memory and objects. This is the best way.
The only app it will not work on is the browser as the back button will send you back through the history.
Try it...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have tried both methods, more often than not though, back doesn't seem to do much either, I have experimented with free RAM and using back or Home, it seems the Home certainly isn't the correct way to do it, but back doesn't work very often either, maybe people aren't coding their apps properly to respond to the back button as an exit method?
this is the never ending discussion whether task manager make sense for android or not.
i'm one of those who say: definetly YES! USE TASKMANGER.
I understand that Android works in a way that taskmanager shouldnt be needed because it handles the tasks on its own, but sadly the concept just doesn't seem to work.
When my ram fills up i can cleary see that the device is getting slower, even just opening apps takes more than 5 seconds. After closing some apps the hero is fast again.
now i don't care whether ANDROID is the reason or some POORLY programmed background apps, because the outcome for me as a user is the same. I#m using advanced task manager and im very happy with it, whenever Android starts to slow down i close the open and unneeded apps, and everything is fast again...don't know how people can claim that Android does handle task management perfectly on its own.
Shahpur.Azizpour said:
this is the never ending discussion whether task manager make sense for android or not.
i'm one of those who say: definetly YES! USE TASKMANGER.
I understand that Android works in a way that taskmanager shouldnt be needed because it handles the tasks on its own, but sadly the concept just doesn't seem to work.
When my ram fills up i can cleary see that the device is getting slower, even just opening apps takes more than 5 seconds. After closing some apps the hero is fast again.
now i don't care whether ANDROID is the reason or some POORLY programmed background apps, because the outcome for me as a user is the same. I#m using advanced task manager and im very happy with it, whenever Android starts to slow down i close the open and unneeded apps, and everything is fast again...don't know how people can claim that Android does handle task management perfectly on its own.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The point is, Task manager of any kind is another 3rd party app taking up more memory, and quite frankly on such a high end phone i shouldn't have to worry about this problem. I noticed another thread about changing the values at which the internal task manager kills apps etc, if it becomes more of a problem i'll look into this method of fixing it.
alias_neo said:
The point is, Task manager of any kind is another 3rd party app taking up more memory, and quite frankly on such a high end phone i shouldn't have to worry about this problem. I noticed another thread about changing the values at which the internal task manager kills apps etc, if it becomes more of a problem i'll look into this method of fixing it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes, in theory we shouldn't worry about tasks in the background, but in reality as you said, the device WILL slow down. so there is no other way around than closing apps manually and defining apps to be kept alive by the 3rd party task manager.
changing values for the internal task manager sounds like something which would only work on a rooted device, but im not sure...
Here's an article posted at http://geekfor.me that is by far the best explanation I've ever seen on this issue:
flipz: said:
FAQ: Why You Shouldn’t Be Using a Task Killer with Android
I see this come up over and over again. People saying that a task is running in the background and they think it is killing their battery or hogging all of their memory. So their natural reaction is to download a program made to kill tasks. Here’s the thing… you are likely doing more harm than good by killing tasks that aren’t ready to end. I was the same way when I first got my CDMA Hero. There were tons of things running that I didn’t want so I just kept killing them. After a few weeks I realized that if I stopped using a task killer (and totally uninstalled it in fact) my phone actually began to run better! The applications would close themselves and things just seemed to be running better. I get that there may be short term benefits from clearing a task, but you should still take the time to read through this.
Here is some information directly from Android’s developer page. I have put the important parts in bold. This is quite a lengthy read but honestly I think it’s important. If you want the full read then you can check out the dev page here. If you just want the quick TL;DNR version then scroll to the bottom.
Google: said:
By default, every application runs in its own Linux process. Android starts the process when any of the application's code needs to be executed, and shuts down the process when it's no longer needed and system resources are required by other applications.
A content provider is active only while it's responding to a request from a ContentResolver. And a broadcast receiver is active only while it's responding to a broadcast message. So there's no need to explicitly shut down these components.
Activities, on the other hand, provide the user interface. They're in a long-running conversation with the user and may remain active, even when idle, as long as the conversation continues. Similarly, services may also remain running for a long time. So Android has methods to shut down activities and services in an orderly way:
An activity can be shut down by calling its finish() method. One activity can shut down another activity (one it started with startActivityForResult()) by calling finishActivity().
A service can be stopped by calling its stopSelf() method, or by calling Context.stopService().
Components might also be shut down by the system when they are no longer being used or when Android must reclaim memory for more active components.
If the user leaves a task for a long time, the system clears the task of all activities except the root activity. When the user returns to the task again, it's as the user left it, except that only the initial activity is present. The idea is that, after a time, users will likely have abandoned what they were doing before and are returning to the task to begin something new.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Google: said:
Activity lifecycle
An activity has essentially three states:
It is active or running when it is in the foreground of the screen (at the top of the activity stack for the current task). This is the activity that is the focus for the user's actions.
It is paused if it has lost focus but is still visible to the user. That is, another activity lies on top of it and that activity either is transparent or doesn't cover the full screen, so some of the paused activity can show through. A paused activity is completely alive (it maintains all state and member information and remains attached to the window manager), but can be killed by the system in extreme low memory situations.
It is stopped if it is completely obscured by another activity. It still retains all state and member information. However, it is no longer visible to the user so its window is hidden and it will often be killed by the system when memory is needed elsewhere.
If an activity is paused or stopped, the system can drop it from memory either by asking it to finish (calling its finish() method), or simply killing its process. When it is displayed again to the user, it must be completely restarted and restored to its previous state.
The foreground lifetime of an activity happens between a call to onResume() until a corresponding call to onPause(). During this time, the activity is in front of all other activities on screen and is interacting with the user. An activity can frequently transition between the resumed and paused states - for example, onPause() is called when the device goes to sleep or when a new activity is started, onResume() is called when an activity result or a new intent is delivered. Therefore, the code in these two methods should be fairly lightweight.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The following diagram illustrates these loops and the paths an activity may take between states. The colored ovals are major states the activity can be in. The square rectangles represent the callback methods you can implement to perform operations when the activity transitions between states.
{
"lightbox_close": "Close",
"lightbox_next": "Next",
"lightbox_previous": "Previous",
"lightbox_error": "The requested content cannot be loaded. Please try again later.",
"lightbox_start_slideshow": "Start slideshow",
"lightbox_stop_slideshow": "Stop slideshow",
"lightbox_full_screen": "Full screen",
"lightbox_thumbnails": "Thumbnails",
"lightbox_download": "Download",
"lightbox_share": "Share",
"lightbox_zoom": "Zoom",
"lightbox_new_window": "New window",
"lightbox_toggle_sidebar": "Toggle sidebar"
}
So… the TL;DNR Version:
Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when more memory is needed.
Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when it's done doing what it needs to do.
Android is hard coded to automatically kill a task when you haven't returned to it in a long time.
Most services (while possibly running in the background) use very little memory when not actively doing something.
A content provider is only doing something when there is a notification for it to give. Otherwise it uses very little memory.
Killing a process when it isn't ready only causes it to have to reload itself and start from scratch when it's needed again.
Because a task is likely running in the background for a reason, killing it will only cause it to re-spawn as soon as the activity that was using it looks for it again. And it will just have to start over again.
Killing certain processes can have undesirable side effects. Not receiving text messages, alarms not going off, and force closes just to name a few.
The only true way to prevent something from running at all on your phone would be to uninstall the .apk.
Most applications will exit themselves if you get out of it by hitting "back" until it closes rather than hitting the "home" button. But even with hitting home, Android will eventually kill it once it's been in the background for a while.
Questions? Concerns? Feel that I’m wrong? Comment below and let’s discuss!
Addendum:
One thing that I forgot to even address here is that memory works a bit differently in linux than it does in Windows. In general the way memory works is you really only need as much as you plan on using. So if your combined running programs use 100mb of memory, 150mb is more than enough. There is no need to clear what's running in memory before you hit that 150mb cap. Now in Windows it seems that the system performs a bit better when you have less stuff in memory, even if it's not full. No doubt those who have been on computers for a while will remember there used to be programs that could clear your memory in Windows also.
Linux however isn't generally affected by this. While I admit that I don't know the architecture and reason for this& linux will run the same regardless of if you have 20mb free memory or 200mb. And as I outlined above, Android will automatically start to kill applications if you do get low on memory! Stealing a quote from Chris Johnston, Buffers and cache in RAM being cleared is silly. Imagine a professor, who rather than writing all the way across the chalkboard, finishes a sentence and immediately erases and starts writing in the upper left corner AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN OR imagine you like a song. You record it to the beginning of a cassette tape. When you want a new song, do you re-record over the first song or record after it?"
I have also seen people incorrectly assume that the more memory in use, the faster their battery will die. This would actually be more attributed to the amount of processor cycles (CPU %) going on and not the amount of memory being taken up by a certain program. However, that does lead to a good point! When can a task manager be a good thing?? To help you determine what IS slowing down your phone; what may actually be draining your battery faster. That is actually what helped us discover that there appears to be a bug still left over from 1.5 that is causing slow downs on our CDMA Hero's even today. While an item using up memory isn't going to hurt things, an item chewing through your CPU absolutely will. Now I still don't suggest using a task killer to kill a program that is using up your processor (unless of course it is a zombie process that is going crazy, but you should probably just reboot in that case). But it can help you see what's going on with your phone.
I hope this has helped someone. With all of that said& I always encourage experimenting. It is your phone, and you can do with it what you please. If you swear that a task killer makes your phone amazing, then by all means use it! Thanks for reading.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Another great resource:
A video from Google's Android Team:
Androidology - Part 2 of 3 - Application Lifecycle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITfRuRkf2TM
And finally:
Check out the application "Task Manager". You'll notice dozens of processes running that you didn't even know were running. Here's my phone right now:
Look at the CPU usage column (the rightmost column) and notice that almost everything is at 0%. (The exception is TaskManager which is constantly polling since it's the active app. Menu -> Quit stops it.)
This is the best visualization that killing "running" apps will do nothing, since they're not really doing anything anyway. I have all these apps open yet they're all using 0% CPU. And I have "only" 47 MB free.
From monitoring this over the weeks, I've had as many as 60+ processes listed, and as few as 10. I've had as high as 200+ MB free and as low as 30 MB.
And my phone ran just the same.
Get rid of all your task killers for a week (and get WatchDog instead) and see how your phone feels.
Hope this helps clear up any confusion.
.
Paul is always great for good information. Everyone should look over his comment's to learn new things
Got a question though, with certain apps like Music and SIPagent there's not a way to close them. I can only pause music and there's no way to exit SIPagent without using a task killer. Shouldn't I use a task killer on these two applications?
ap3604 said:
Paul is always great for good information. Everyone should look over his comment's to learn new things
Got a question though, with certain apps like Music and SIPagent there's not a way to close them. I can only pause music and there's no way to exit SIPagent without using a task killer. Shouldn't I use a task killer on these two applications?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
that's a good question; some apps doesn't have that quit button, like the Skyfire browser, so if i were to use the browser and close it, will still be running in the background? shouldn't i have to kill that app somehow?
anyway, will remove task killers now and give it a shot
Great thread as always, Paul, but which "Task Manager" are you talking about?
http://www.appbrain.com/search?q=task+manager
There are quite a few
I don't use a task manager, but I *have* used SeePU++'s task kill feature a couple times.
I think I found it:
http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.houmiak.taskmanager
And if you guys don't believe Paul:
jblazea50 said:
that's a good question; some apps doesn't have that quit button, like the Skyfire browser, so if i were to use the browser and close it, will still be running in the background? shouldn't i have to kill that app somehow?
anyway, will remove task killers now and give it a shot
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
They all work the same way as described in the post. You don't have to quite Skyfire, the Music app, SIPagent, or anything at all. Read through the post again, the Android OS will stop those when it needs memory.
For example, if Music is playing, it asks the Android system to consider it foreground, so it will never get forced to quit. But when music is paused it just runs as a normal app. When Android needs the memory, it force quits it immediately.
Same with Skyfire, it will remain loaded in the background if no other process needs the memory. This way if you leave and go back to it quickly it will be there, and won't have to reload. When something else needs the memory Android closes Skyfire. If you force it to close all the time, you only force it to load more often when you need it again, wasting time and battery life.
So how do I get more ram?
muncheese said:
So how do I get more ram?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't. Applications will be closed automatically by the OS when you need more RAM.
Clarkster said:
They all work the same way as described in the post. You don't have to quite Skyfire, the Music app, SIPagent, or anything at all. Read through the post again, the Android OS will stop those when it needs memory.
For example, if Music is playing, it asks the Android system to consider it foreground, so it will never get forced to quit. But when music is paused it just runs as a normal app. When Android needs the memory, it force quits it immediately.
Same with Skyfire, it will remain loaded in the background if no other process needs the memory. This way if you leave and go back to it quickly it will be there, and won't have to reload. When something else needs the memory Android closes Skyfire. If you force it to close all the time, you only force it to load more often when you need it again, wasting time and battery life.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the explanation; i already removed the task killers from my phone and will see how it goes
muncheese said:
So how do I get more ram?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You're in luck my friend!
Here you go:
http://www.downloadmoreram.com/index.html
Your phone will FLY!
Paul22000 said:
You're in luck my friend!
Here you go:
http://www.downloadmoreram.com/index.html
Your phone will FLY!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Awesome, I left a little on the server for you guys.
Re: FAQ: Why You Shouldnt Be Using a Task Killer with Android (geekfor.me)
I have a problem with the way android does this multitasking because when I send opera or skyfire to the background, I want it to stay there no matter what. Most of the time It's still there when I switch back to it in a few moments. But sometimes the OS has decided to close it, even though I only switched away a few moments ago to read a quick email, and my webpage is completely gone. This is a major problem for me. It's especially maddening when you then see that the OS closed opera or sky fire to pre load a bunch of apps that I haven't used in a month. Like sms backup. That's an app that I need once a month to back up my texts. So I DON'T want to uninstall it.
-------------------------------------
Sent via the XDA Tapatalk App
I agree with your post but there are a few reasons to have an app that allows you to control your apps and yes, kill them from time to time. The main one is some apps need to run in the background to work properly and it can be a quicker way to kill them when you are done with them. One I use like this is trapster. Trapster uses a lot of battery. In order to kill it I have to switch to it and drill a menu. I dont kill it because of memory concerns, I kill it because of battery usage which is not a fault, it needs to run in the background to work properly. Rather than do that though I just click one icon and kill all with my tool of choice, systempanel. I'll get back to that.
Systempanel gives you a lot of information about what your apps are doing both in real time and can log. CPU cycles used, data, etc. With it you can easily locate that app that is killing your battery or just get real data about your processes and their consumption. Just a few days ago my battery took a 10% dump in an hour and I had not even been using the phone. Only took a minute with systempanel to figure out an app I had called quick settings had been smoking crack and gone bat**** on me. One uninstall/reinstall later, all good. Try that with atk. I set up so that all my frequently used apps are excluded from a kill all as well as lower level processes. This means in the odd case like after running trapster when I kill all I'm only killing apps that would have likely been completely shut down and need to fully restart anyways and I probably wasnt going to use them regardless because they are not frequently used apps. In other words I lose somewhere between very little and nothing but save the hassle of drilling menus to kill an app I want to stop. Im pretty high on this app, you can read more here http://androidforums.com/android-ap...task-killer-people-who-hate-task-killers.html
Re: FAQ: Why You Shouldnt Be Using a Task Killer with Android (geekfor.me)
I understand all that, but I DON'T run anything but stock apps plus opera. So I DON'T have any unique situations of certain apps needing to be running for things to work properly. If you saw my system panel list you would see how downright simple my phone setup is, yet something like opera can't even stay open because the OS killed it. It's a horrible multitasking mechanism.
I was responding to a different post Roger, sorry for the confusion. Yours and several others came in before I was done typing.
I have had that one a couple times myself. I have been keeping my eye out for a good startup manager. Something that will allow me to stop amazon and others alltogether as well as manage when apps can startup. Something along the lines of only when the phone has been asleep for a set amount of time and so on. Might be a guy could make it so that the problem is reduced that way although it doesnt attack the problem directly.
Re: FAQ: Why You Shouldnt Be Using a Task Killer with Android (geekfor.me)
Oh sorry I got confused.
Well anyway I don't have it in me to make a long detailed post, but I'm finding that android's multitasking is seriously flawed on a fundamental level. In fact it does the exact opposite of what I'm trying to do in many instances.
One quick example, load up a few webpages in the default browser, maybe an article or 2 and have the pages fully load so they are there to read. Great, now minimize the browser and go to the homescreen and then back to the browser. Your pages are still there, good.
Now I lost my data connection cause I'm commuting on the the train to work in a tunnel. If I open up any other app the OS closes the browser. When I reopen the browser all my loaded pages are still there in memory to read, but the browser immediately tries to refresh the pages, which won't work cause no data connection, and now my cached page disappears. Horrible. I purposely loaded those pages to read offline. The ass kicker is that all the while this happened because the OS decided to pre load a bunch of apps during this time which were not running previously and caused this browser to close. Apps I've not used in weeks, yet the app I WANT suffers.
I have more extreme examples but don't have the energy to post them now. But Google has closed out this item on their suggestion/bug forum.
RogerPodacter said:
Oh sorry I got confused.
Well anyway I don't have it in me to make a long detailed post, but I'm finding that android's multitasking is seriously flawed on a fundamental level. In fact it does the exact opposite of what I'm trying to do in many instances.
One quick example, load up a few webpages in the default browser, maybe an article or 2 and have the pages fully load so they are there to read. Great, now minimize the browser and go to the homescreen and then back to the browser. Your pages are still there, good.
Now I lost my data connection cause I'm commuting on the the train to work in a tunnel. If I open up any other app the OS closes the browser. When I reopen the browser all my loaded pages are still there in memory to read, but the browser immediately tries to refresh the pages, which won't work cause no data connection, and now my cached page disappears. Horrible. I purposely loaded those pages to read offline. The ass kicker is that all the while this happened because the OS decided to pre load a bunch of apps during this time which were not running previously and caused this browser to close. Apps I've not used in weeks, yet the app I WANT suffers.
I have more extreme examples but don't have the energy to post them now. But Google has closed out this item on their suggestion/bug forum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You could easily download taskpanel, and add apps you do not need to the "auto kill list". I didn't know stock (which you said you were on a while ago) was so horrible when it came to memory, your problems don't even exist on my phone. I'm curious, if you installed Cyanogen would your problems away. If my browser closed on me after having too many apps open, I would be irritated as well.
I can have about 50-60 applications idle, or whatever, and the browser would never close. I don't use Opera, or Skyfire, though.
Paul22000 said:
Here's an article posted at http://geekfor.me that is by far the best explanation I've ever seen...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice find, I got this article since a couple of weeks in my signature, in another forum and killed my taskkiller since then
I use a Task Manager that separates system tasks from app tasks. Anything I use on a regular basis, or even at all, including widgets I use and such, I add to the ignore list. I use it to kill background apps that try to run when they don't need to run. Why don't they need to run? Because I don't need stocks and twitter apps running because I don't use them and it won't let me uninstall them. Next best thing to do is to put them on an auto kill list, though it isn't quite aggressive enough. I really don't want to root just to uninstall the massive amount of bloat that comes from Telstra.
Paul22000 said:
You're in luck my friend!
Here you go:
http://www.downloadmoreram.com/index.html
Your phone will FLY!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
O.M.G.!!!!! This totally worked for me. This link should be stickied. Easy to use and simple.
muncheese said:
Awesome, I left a little on the server for you guys.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There can never be too much.
Now, a question. How about a program that polls for a signal, like google maps? Will it not look for things like my location? Please educate me, I want to believe.
wow great info and its really starting to help out after a few days. Think i got a pretty good question though. I understand the killing of apps and all of that now but what do yall think of a startup manager and picking and choosing before or while the system is booting (ive been using startup manager i found in the market). Just wanted to see what everyone thought. thanks, veritas
So Samsung for whatever reason, decides it's a good idea to include an easy to access task manager with a giant "kill all tasks" button in TouchWiz. It seems like everyone I know, that has a Galaxy S II, has adopted a certain behavior due this. What they do is, every time they put their phone away, they will automatically go to this task manager and kill all tasks, before locking the phone. When I ask them why the hell they're doing that, the answer is usually something like "wasting battery blah blah blah" or "wasting CPU blah blah blah"... NO!
For starters:
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
http://lifehacker.com/5650894/andro...ed-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
http://www.infoworld.com/t/smartphones/myth-android-devices-need-task-killers-609
http://androinica.com/2010/05/googl...-imply-task-killermanager-apps-are-pointless/
People that are doing this, educate yourself. And Samsung, well done for encouraging this.
Just because a task is in memory, doesn't mean it's doing anything, and certainly doesn't mean it's using up battery. If it's staying in memory, it's because there's no need to release it just yet. If you start it up again, it will already be there, and load up faster. The alternative is, you keep killing it, and every time you run it again, it will have to reinitialize and reload everything. Which option do you think is actually going to cost more battery?
The whole thing with people saying "oh no it's using CPU, i must kill it"... what?! If it's using CPU, it's probably doing something. Why the hell are you killing a process while it's in the middle of doing something? Do you not care about data integrity at all? It could have been in the middle of syncing, or in the middle of a write operation who knows.
If you run other applications and your memory runs low, then Android will close it. And it will close it properly, as opposed to you force killing it, denying it of any chance to clean up.
Obviously there are rare exceptions with dodgy programs. But most of the time, the tasks being killed are system apps, or trustworthy apps, properly written by Google or Samsung.
If you're not a developer, you probably won't understand the whole Android application lifecycle.
http://developer.android.com/reference/android/app/Activity.html
By force closing an application, you're not allowing it to run its onStop() and onDestroy() functions. This is where apps do all the clean up, releasing resources, unregistering things, closing connections etc.
Do you do this on your PC. Open up Windows task manager, and just kill any task that's using CPU. Or hell, just kill all tasks every 2 minutes! Good luck with that.
This has probably been said hundreds of times, but a lot of people i know are getting GSII's and I see them doing this constantly. It's stupid. Do you really think they designed the operating system so that you have to kill everything each time you touch it?
TLDR: Stop "killing all tasks" (unless theres actually something wrong) and well done Samsung for encouraging this. Just stupid.
Damn your right, I never used a task killer on previous android phones, but for some reason I have got into the habit of doing it now. So I'm going to kill that habit. Well noticed
Well according to the user guide (the full one from Samsung's website)... though personally I don't bother killing anything
Use the task manager › ›
Your device is a multitasking device. It can run more than one application at the same time. However, multitasking may cause hang-ups, freezing, memory problems, or additional power consumption. To avoid these problems, end unnecessary programs using the task manager.
1 In Idle mode, open the application list and select Task manager → Active applications.
The list of all the applications currently running on your device appears.
2 To close an application, select Exit.To close all active applications, select Exit all.
i like the placebo effect and stop telling me what i have to do or not to do!
your writing style is to aggressive, stop being aggressive!
For me, it is worth to have the clear memory option because I already faced the glitch or bugs program which cause my phone to run constantly at 1.2ghz and this will cause my phone become extremely hot. I can't see what application is running but for some reason, the cpu gone crazy. It drain battery in no time. With the simple one click button, I can closed the programs without need to restart the phone. Yes, generally I will let the android system to handle the application by itself but I still think it was a good moved by samsung to have task manager if we use it in proper way...
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
Well it's not all that bad, with 2 cores one core can easily come into a deadlock and the device will continue to function albeit much slower and consuming a lot of power, when this happens in the taskmanager the processes are listed red
Thanks ever so for much for this post I have just got my first Android phone and thought by doing this it would increase the battery life a tad but did kinda think it was a bit daft having a system that required manually killing tasks. Coming from a Windows 6.1 XDA Zest I am still getting my head round an OS that's doesn't require hours on Internet to work out how to do things.
Sad, but true, I was getting onto Android from Symbian, and first thing after I realised that I do not have option of killing all apps, I have installed the task killer and kept using it for like a week, then I've read one of the articles about it, that its wrong, and that Android is not working as Symbian nor Windows, so I realised that I dont need to do that... unninstalled it and not using it at all since
You don't need Task manager / killer if only all android applications are developed by good programmers that implement Android application lifecycle properly.
The problem is not all applications are developed this way. Some application may buggy / in beta stage that still consuming processing time even they are in background.
Task manager is still useful to close nasty program manually. But I do agree, auto-kill is useless and can cause battery drain and system instability.
Yep .. it's mostly services what eats battery. And there is poor control over that. It would be interesting to see what service was active at what time, or even how much battery did it use. All battery discussions are about guessing what is running in the background and how often and how much. We should not guess such things.
As far as I'm concerned an in built task manager is just as important as an in built modem right now. There are far too many unstable applications out there that hang up and Android can never fully deal with them(despite what research may or may not have been done in the past).
I have a few games installed on my S2(namely Pool Break Pro & TNA iMPACT!) that crash quite often and require the use of the task manager to manually end those programs(they are in the task manager highlighted in red when they have stalled).
However, what I will say is that the button to clear memory in the RAM manager really shouldn't be there at all. The task manager alone is more than enough to manually exit necessary apps that crash and stay open for no reason.
I like to have the ability to close programs easily at hand. It gives me better control over "rogue" apps. I only use it for a few programs though, like the Engadget app. It seems to be poorly coded, often using 40-50% CPU when running in the background.
Sent from my GT-I9100 using XDA Premium App
I like it because it lets me close frozen apps quicker..
the_Calen said:
i like the placebo effect and stop telling me what i have to do or not to do!
your writing style is to aggressive, stop being aggressive!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Lol yes. Not to be taken too seriously.
Force closing apps with the task manager when somethings wrong with the phone or closing broken apps makes sense. I'm just talking about people that instinctively press the close all apps button every time they use the phone for a second. It's just silly. Basically doing what those automatic task killing apps do.
I use to kill opera everytime i'm done with browsing because even in idle mode the phone gets very hot when opera runs in the backgtound. But after these explanstions i stop force killing every app
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
If a program is badly written and won't stay idle, then kill it.
I am very selective about what I install, and never kill or need to kill anything.
You have 1 GB of ram on this phone. If you want best battery and speed, don't kill anything. loading a running app from ram uses less power than starting from scratch and booting it from nand, then starting it up.
So if apps are well written, don't kill them. If stuff stays around causing drain, kill it individually but find a better app
This thread is spot on... for the most part. Like Pulser said, there are apps when idling/cached, cause detrimental effects like the one I detailed here causing your phone to stay Awake constantly and draining battery:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1094666
ATK isn't the most elegant method, but it allows you to put everything else on ignore and have it actively kill the apps that love to stay cached and cause issues even after you've exited out of them.
Is there a way to "lock" some apps into a memory so they never quit by the android OS except if I would decide to?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
You have a valid point, but most of the time those apps don't do anything critical that it would hurt to interrupt. I usually prefer to exit them normally, but sometimes I just kill it, like when I forgot the Messages / Internet open. No need to paranoia though, leaving a few open won't kill your battery.
PINki92 said:
Is there a way to "lock" some apps into a memory so they never quit by the android OS except if I would decide to?
Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's exactly what I needed. There are some apps, like SetCPU, TB, Root Explorer, which can be added to SuperUser authorization and it won't get killed by anything unless someone manually kills it. I'd really really like to know how to add an app under SuperUser or anything which will do the job to add the app in to the OS and which can't be killed by any Task Killer or anything.
Besides I also hate those Task Killer apps, they are meaningless unless an user do nothing regularly with his/her phone.
I've no Task Killer installed but once I used the built in Memory Clear feature and next day my schedule app got closed. From then I never touched it. But one thing if RAM usage goes above 400 MB I think sometime its good to clear the memory as it will help to refresh it. But Samsung should had put the Memory Clear feature more precisely.
Regards.
Sent from GT-I9100
I've seen some people complaining about how low RAM they have left in their phones and others suggesting task killers to manage the RAM and save battery. Well, that is not the case. So, I've gathered some information from the web so you can understand...
How processes and activities work on Android
Activity lifecycle
An activity has essentially three states:
It is active or running when it is in the foreground of the screen (at the top of the activity stack for the current task). This is the activity that is the focus for the user’s actions.
It is paused if it has lost focus but is still visible to the user. That is, another activity lies on top of it and that activity either is transparent or doesn’t cover the full screen, so some of the paused activity can show through. A paused activity is completely alive (it maintains all state and member information and remains attached to the window manager), but can be killed by the system in extreme low memory situations.
It is stopped if it is completely obscured by another activity. It still retains all state and member information. However, it is no longer visible to the user so its window is hidden and it will often be killed by the system when memory is needed elsewhere.
If an activity is paused or stopped, the system can drop it from memory either by asking it to finish (calling its finish() method), or simply killing its process. When it is displayed again to the user, it must be completely restarted and restored to its previous state.
The foreground lifetime of an activity happens between a call to onResume() until a corresponding call to onPause(). During this time, the activity is in front of all other activities on screen and is interacting with the user. An activity can frequently transition between the resumed and paused states — for example, onPause() is called when the device goes to sleep or when a new activity is started, onResume() is called when an activity result or a new intent is delivered. Therefore, the code in these two methods should be fairly lightweight.
Taken from the Android Developers site
Android's built-in task-manager
What people don’t seem to realize is that android is designed to have a large number of tasks stored in memory at all times. Why? Well basically we are talking about a mobile device. On a mobile device things tend to be slower. The hardware isn’t as robust as say a desktop or a laptop, so in order to get that same “snappy” feeling, there have to be workarounds.
One of these is how android deals with memory. Android will load up your apps and then keep them running until they absolutely HAVE to kill them. This is because that way, if you want to re-open an app, the system already has it loaded and can then just resume it instead of reloading it. This provides a significant performance increase.
What a lot of people don’t realize as well is that android kernels have their own task manager. This means that:
it will be more efficient than any app-based task manager as it is run at the kernel level, and
it should be left up to that task killer to decide when to free up memory
There is only one case where having a task killer is a good idea, and that is when you want to kill ONE SPECIFIC APP. Killing all apps is never a good idea. You don’t know what operations they are performing or if they are necessary.
Said from a very experienced ROM cooker
CPU usage matters more
This set-up implies that the goal of killing these apps is to free up memory. Nowhere on the list does it mention the number of CPU cycles each app is consuming, only the memory you’ll free by killing it. As we’ve learned, full memory is not a bad thing—we want to watch out for the CPU, the resource that actually slows down your phone and drains your battery life.
Thus, killing all but the essential apps (or telling Android to kill apps more aggressively with the “autokill” feature) is generally unnecessary. Furthermore, it’s actually possible that this will worsen your phone’s performance and battery life. Whether you’re manually killing apps all the time or telling the task killer to aggressively remove apps from your memory, you’re actually using CPU cycles when you otherwise wouldn’t—killing apps that aren’t doing anything in the first place.
In fact, some of the processes related to those apps will actually start right back up, further draining your CPU. If they don’t, killing those processes can cause other sorts of problems—alarms don’t go off, you don’t receive text messages, or other related apps may force close without warning. All in all, you’re usually better off letting your phone work as intended—especially if you’re more of a casual user. In these instances, a task killer causes more problems than it solves.
Said from Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker
The more RAM available, the more Android will find ways to use it up which means your battery will be dead in hours.
From droid-life.com
So that's it. Let the lovely green robot do the job for you while you're playing games or using the xda app or whatever...
More detailed article
We almost hate to approach the topic of Task Killers on Android after all this time, but with so many new faces here at Droid Life and in Android in general, it’s something that needs to be done. In fact, after seeing the Amazon app of the day and reading through the Twitter conversations we just had with many of you, this thing needs to be posted immediately. Let’s see if we can’t get you all some better battery life!
If this was 2009 and we were all running something less than Android 2.2, that statement plastered on that red banner might be somewhat correct. But since it is 2011 and the majority of people on the planet are running Android 2.2, we need to get you away from the mindset that killing off tasks on your phone is a good thing.
So rather than me blabbering about the inner-workings of Android and how it manages RAM for the 10,000th time, I’m going to just pull from some posts that friends of ours have done that explain this in the plainest of ways.
First up is our boy @cvpcs who you may know from CM and his Sapphire ROM days. He knows Android inside-and-out, so when he goes into memory management which is done by the OS itself, you should listen up:
…What people don’t seem to realize is that android is designed to have a large number of tasks stored in memory at all times. Why? Well basically we are talking about a mobile device. On a mobile device things tend to be slower. The hardware isn’t as robust as say a desktop or a laptop, so in order to get that same “snappy” feeling, there have to be workarounds.
One of these is how android deals with memory. Android will load up your apps and then keep them running until they absolutely HAVE to kill them. This is because that way, if you want to re-open an app, the system already has it loaded and can then just resume it instead of reloading it. This provides a significant performance increase.
What a lot of people don’t realize as well is that android kernels have their own task manager. This means that:
it will be more efficient than any app-based task manager as it is run at the kernel level, and
it should be left up to that task killer to decide when to free up memory
There is only one case where having a task killer is a good idea, and that is when you want to kill ONE SPECIFIC APP. Killing all apps is never a good idea. You don’t know what operations they are performing or if they are necessary.
Whitson Gordon of Lifehacker suggests that you should be more worried about CPU usage than what’s going on with your RAM. We agree:
This set-up implies that the goal of killing these apps is to free up memory. Nowhere on the list does it mention the number of CPU cycles each app is consuming, only the memory you’ll free by killing it. As we’ve learned, full memory is not a bad thing—we want to watch out for the CPU, the resource that actually slows down your phone and drains your battery life.
Thus, killing all but the essential apps (or telling Android to kill apps more aggressively with the “autokill” feature) is generally unnecessary. Furthermore, it’s actually possible that this will worsen your phone’s performance and battery life. Whether you’re manually killing apps all the time or telling the task killer to aggressively remove apps from your memory, you’re actually using CPU cycles when you otherwise wouldn’t—killing apps that aren’t doing anything in the first place.
In fact, some of the processes related to those apps will actually start right back up, further draining your CPU. If they don’t, killing those processes can cause other sorts of problems—alarms don’t go off, you don’t receive text messages, or other related apps may force close without warning. All in all, you’re usually better off letting your phone work as intended—especially if you’re more of a casual user. In these instances, a task killer causes more problems than it solves.
More on how Android has a built-in memory-management system, but also on how killing all tasks is not a good thing:
Android was designed from the ground up as an operating system (OS) for mobile devices. Its built-in application and memory-management systems were engineered with battery life as one of the most critical concerns.
The Android OS does not work like a desktop operating system. On a desktop OS, like Windows, Mac OS X, or Ubuntu Linux, the user is responsible for closing programs in order to keep a reasonable amount of memory available. On Android, this is not the case. The OS itself automatically removes programs from memory as memory is needed. The OS may also preload applications into memory which it thinks might soon be needed.
Having lots of available empty memory is not a good thing. It takes the same amount of power to hold “nothing” in memory as it does to hold actual data. So, like every other operating system in use today, Android does its best to keep as much important/likely-to-be-used information in memory as possible.
As such, using the task manager feature of SystemPanel to constantly clear memory by killing all apps is strongly NOT RECOMMENDED. This also applies to any other task killer / management program. Generally speaking, you should only “End” applications if you see one which is not working correctly. The “End All” feature can be used if your phone/device is performing poorly and you are uncertain of the cause.
And we could go on for hours with source after source on why task killers do nothing but work against Android, but you probably get the point now don’t you? Ready for a quick recap? OK.
Basically, Android keeps tasks handy because it thinks you’ll want to perform them again in a very short amount of time. If you don’t, it will clear them out for you. It also likes to keep as many things handy as possible so that the overall performance of your device is top notch. If Android were to completely kill off everything that your phone is doing, then it would require more resources to restart all of them and you would likely run into slowness and battery drains. By keeping certain things available to you, your phone is actually running better than it would without. So please, stop killing off tasks and let Android do the work for you.
Your goal for the week is wash your brain of the idea that having little RAM available is a bad thing. The more RAM available, the more Android will find ways to use it up which means your battery will be dead in hours. Instead, let it manage itself, so that you can spend more time playing Angry Birds or reading Droid Life.
All good now?
EDIT: http://www.droid-life.com/2011/06/02/revisiting-android-task-killers-and-why-you-dont-need-one/
Thanks Chris and Dare Devil.
I wondered why people didn't really use task killers...now I know...
Sent from my X8 using xda premium
Very helpful post. I'm always using task killer whenever i want.. I mean before playing a game, after playing a game and sometimes for no reason at all because there are so many things loaded up in the memory.... I have been wondering what drained my battery and i think this is the cause... Thanks to you people.:angel:
nice info buddy,,,
thanks.
:thumbup:
Sent from my E15i using xda premium
1. RAM Manager Pro? Does it work or does it mess with Android's RAM management on Kernel level?
2. Why is that when I load up the phone under running services>show cached processes I have a lot of processes running and after a half a days usage, that same page shows "Nothing running"?
My single biggest gripe with the Android OS is the way it closes backgrounded applications without the user's permission, unrelated to available memory but rather amount of time the app is left idle. I can be editing a Word document in QuickOffice or Docs-to-Go, then get an incoming call, answer it and talk for ten minutes, only to find my Office application has been closed and all my changes have been lost.
I am wondering if perhaps by some small miracle, the Atrix has been programmed differently from other Android devices NOT to do this, because of its intended function as a desktop substitute via the Webtop environment. No one ever wants their desktop/laptop computer shutting down applications because they left to grab a coffee for ten minutes, so I'm hoping maybe the Moto devs took this into account and somehow turned off the "auto close backgrounded apps if left idle for X minutes" functionality of Android.
It's only a slim hope I'm holding out regarding this, but maybe someone can answer definitively one way or the other.. anyone know for sure?
No, it's still the same operating system. The Webtop is completely separate from Android.
Nope. I'm slightly annoyed every time adw ex is background killed just because I was reading my email, and it has to completely reload.
Not only that, but gingerbread took away the option to keep the launcher persistent
Sent from my MB860 using Tapatalk
If your app doesn't restore the previous state on restart, then the app developer is to blame, not android. Just saying
turl1 said:
If your app doesn't restore the previous state on restart, then the app developer is to blame, not android. Just saying
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, but Motorola's responsible for any killing of webtop. X isn't designed to be magically killed the way that Android kills things.
It is worth pointing out this is less of an issue on Atrix given the 1Gb of RAM... but yes, this is still Android and as such the memory management is ultimately the same.
I have had cases on the Atrix where I am playing Angry Birds, get distracted and browse the web, forget I was playing the game... then return to the game 1 hour later to find it's still running as I left it. This certainly would NOT have happened on my Galaxy S!
Sogarth said:
Sorry, but Motorola's responsible for any killing of webtop. X isn't designed to be magically killed the way that Android kills things.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
We were talking about android apps though
turl1 said:
If your app doesn't restore the previous state on restart, then the app developer is to blame, not android. Just saying
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Most apps do restore previous state.
They also take a while to do so.
On the other hand, my biggest gripe is resolved: cm7 has an built in option under he performance setting to keep the launcher persistant, so I don't really care anymore
Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk
From my understanding of Android programming, it only closes Background tasks automatically, all apps are started as Background tasks by default, it's up to the app to tell Android that it's a Foreground app, and it can't be closed automatically.
Hmm, I've used QuickOffice and left it alone for a while (got distracted, went on the internet, checked emails, turned off the screen, etc) and it was still all there when I came back. Does it happen to you frequently?
As a test I just made a new word document and typed some random stuff into it. I'll leave it alone for a day in the background and see if it's still there tomorrow...
Restoring to previous state works for some types of apps, but for others it's not a viable solution. For example streaming radio applications or chat programs like eBuddy, Fring, Skype etc. These need to be left running constantly in the background, not just restored to where they left off, because otherwise you're not available to be contacted through them while they're closed/offline. Some of those apps use the workaround of an ongoing notification to avoid being shut down, but that is really just a trick that developers shouldn't have to resort to.
I find that both QuickOffice and Documents-To-Go get shut down constantly when left idle in the background, even with nothing else running or using memory, and after only ten minutes or so of idle time. And I always lose all unsaved changes - the previous state is never restored.
What seems to happen is this: I can leave a document in the background for hours, and then come back to it okay, IF I don't do anything else in between. But if before returning to the open document, I launch ANY other app first, even a very small footprint one like a notepad, THAT is when the previously backgrounded apps like QuickOffice get closed by Android. It seems that Android's auto-close-after-idle activity is triggered by the next time the user launches something else. That's when the check is done and idle apps get shut down.
There are free app-switching utilities like AltTabApps and Smart Taskbar which allow you to easily see which windowed apps/tasks are still currently running. Using these I have tested and confirmed that I can actually leave quite a few things running idle in the background for a full day, and every time I keep checking, they are all still there and open, waiting to be switched back to. But then as soon as I open a new small app, and all those others have been sitting there idle and backgrounded for long enough, *POOF*, they all get closed instananeously the moment the new app is opened.
And like I said it's not related to memory, because I can see how much is free, and the app I end up opening is very small as well.
So if you're going to test, don't just leave it for a day and then try to come back to it. Before you go back to it, open something else that ISN'T already running (such as email or text messaging which are always quietly open already).. choose a brand new app to open and then try to go back to your Quickoffice document. On the three or four Android 2.2 devices on which I have tried this, I have never, ever been able to return to a document without losing all changes.
Sorry for the long message.. just important to point out the mechanism at work so as to avoid a false positive result, since there are cases when you can return to documents when you haven't opened anything else new in between.
Ok, I see what you mean now. Tried it the way you said and left it for a good while and it did indeed lose the stuff I had typed. I can see how that would get frustrating...
Have you tried using a task manager and telling it to keep QuickOffice alive (i.e. for the system to never kill it)? Although this will probably eat your battery, so I guess only do this if you really need it. I doubt there's a way to turn the functionality off entirely, as it's a pretty core part of making multi-tasking work on low power consumption devices.
Even with my devices rooted, no task manager I have ever seen or tried has successfully been able to override the core Android system to keep-alive any app that I've specified. These utilities seem only to be able to affect their OWN task-closing habits or aggressiveness levels, but not to prevent the OS from doing its own thing separate from their internal settings.
Not to get side-tracked into an OS comparison, but I have an HTC Leo HD2 running Windows Mobile 6.5, and it is able to keep a dozen applications open in the background indefinitely, without ever slowing down or draining the battery. I can leave Word Mobile, Coreplayer, Internet Explorer, Opera Mobile, Windows Messenger, and a large handful of others all open and still get a strong couple of days out of the battery. Surely if an older OS like WinMo (and even WebOS and Symbian) can do this, Android should be capable of it too. For this very reason unfortunately, I have had to stick to Android 2.1 or WM devices as I need my apps to stay open until I decide to close them. I am always hoping though that a new 2.3 or 2.4 device will come along that allows disabling of this functionality by the user.
paleozord said:
Even with my devices rooted, no task manager I have ever seen or tried has successfully been able to override the core Android system to keep-alive any app that I've specified. These utilities seem only to be able to affect their OWN task-closing habits or aggressiveness levels, but not to prevent the OS from doing its own thing separate from their internal settings.
Not to get side-tracked into an OS comparison, but I have an HTC Leo HD2 running Windows Mobile 6.5, and it is able to keep a dozen applications open in the background indefinitely, without ever slowing down or draining the battery. I can leave Word Mobile, Coreplayer, Internet Explorer, Opera Mobile, Windows Messenger, and a large handful of others all open and still get a strong couple of days out of the battery. Surely if an older OS like WinMo (and even WebOS and Symbian) can do this, Android should be capable of it too. For this very reason unfortunately, I have had to stick to Android 2.1 or WM devices as I need my apps to stay open until I decide to close them. I am always hoping though that a new 2.3 or 2.4 device will come along that allows disabling of this functionality by the user.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The keep persitant value was depreciated from android alltogether in 2.3. However, if cm7 can be set to keep alive the launcher and the messenger app, then it stands to say there is still a way around this.
Sent from my NookColor using Tapatalk