Hi,
I don't think this is limited to my device so I am asking here. Are you guys really able to multitask on your devices? On mine I start the web browser then I switch over a couple of apps and when I try to go bqck to the browser it gets launched all over again. Of course it remembers all the pages I have opened but they get reloaded. The same happens to other apps all the time. That drives me crazy. I installed an app called System Panel that I used to have on my HTC Desire and it shows that there are a lot of background services running and out of 700 megs of RAM it's only 50-80 free memory. Among those running apss there are services of widgets that I have never used like AP widget, world clocks, Yahoo finance, samsung hubs and etc. That's insane that such stuff occupies memory while apps that I really use gets killed so eagerly. Is there any way to improve on this behavior? My HTC desire seems to handle more apps at once than my GalTab :O
Marcin
Sent from my GT-P7500 using Tapatalk
I'm with you about the browser. So irritating that pages are reloaded when you leave the browser. I put starburst ROM on mine so I'm not sure if that took care of the RAM issues, but the reloading browser is pure fail. (BTW- I use dolphin for pad and it's the same).
I guess it's more a matter of the OS killing background apps to retain memory than the app behavior.
In Android an app(it's called an Activity) cannot forbid the operating system from killing it when the OS decides to. An app can only gets notified about the event of being killed to persist its state to be able to restore it later. And the browser does that.
What the problem really is here is that because of a lot of bloatware(including background services of Samsung hubs, Yahoo widget, Associated Press widget) running in background the OS is not having enough memory to keep the user apps runinng. So soon afther an app is put into background it gets killed to make space in memory for other apps.
And as far as I know killing thresholds for available memory are set to around 56 MB. And this happens to be around how much free memory is available for most of the time. So it makes any app put in background to be killed almost immediately. This makes the OS that is supposed to have an edge over iOS in terms of multitasking to be in fact able to run a single app at a time
And ifor example my HTC desire that runs vanilla Android 2.3.4 (Oxygen) seems to run with close to 200 MBs (out of 576MB built in according to the specs) of free RAM during normal operation. I do not use any task killers or any similiar tools. This makes the OS to easily handle multiple apps in background.
So, the question becomes: "how do we [permanently] kill all those background bloatware processes?"
freeze them with titanium backup
U guys realize it only reloads browser pages if u back out or hit the home button right? X the tabs out and ur browser will not do this
The only app that ever shows me the low memory msg is logmein ignition
Sent from my GT-P7510 using XDA Premium App
This is not really what we are talking about here. Try it this way. Open any page in a browser. GMail for instance. Log in and leave it this way. Now open the task switcher and go to some other app (e.g. Tapatalk). Navigate through some other apps and then select the task switcher and try to go back to your browser. You will notice that it was shut down silently and now it's started again. All previously open pages will be reloaded at this point. On my HTC Desire using the same scenario I end up with a web browser screen restored with the already open page not being reloaded. It even remembers what part of the page I scrolled down to.
bandit_knight said:
This is not really what we are talking about here. Try it this way. Open any page in a browser. GMail for instance. Log in and leave it this way. Now open the task switcher and go to some other app (e.g. Tapatalk). Navigate through some other apps and then select the task switcher and try to go back to your browser. You will notice that it was shut down silently and now it's started again. All previously open pages will be reloaded at this point. On my HTC Desire using the same scenario I end up with a web browser screen restored with the already open page not being reloaded. It even remembers what part of the page I scrolled down to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So the honeycomb memory management system is doing its job and freeing up memory when the browser is in the background idle. You are complaining?
bluskye said:
So the honeycomb memory management system is doing its job and freeing up memory when the browser is in the background idle. You are complaining?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well, it does not really. I just rebooted my device and noticed that now I can switch between tasks without having the one that I've just put into background immediatelly killed. Also after the reboot there is around 300 MB of free RAM compared to 50 MB thad I had after a few days of use. Also the entire device feels way more snappy now. Doesn't it look like a memory leak?
I have not seen this problem - can have many things running and still have close to 100mb memory free. Doesn't seem to have got worse from a few weeks usage, either. But I have noticed some running processes that I have never even opened, which is strange. Solution is definitely to root and then freeze the things you don't need, but personally I am not going to do this as my memory seems fine. You could try taking off certain widgets and not running certain programs after reboot to see if one thing in particular causes a big memory drain. Social Hubs? I have never even opened this as it caused a mess on my Samsung phone.
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...
The web browser should be Google's most stable and capable app, that's where google should shine. I wont rehash all of my browser problems (yes I've tried 3rd party browser apps) because I trust google and ill be patient for software updates to make the browser more functional. But sometimes from the browser I press home, send a text and when I go back to browser I'm at my homepage but other times same sequence and I'm at the same page that I was on before I pressed home and sent the text. I know its not my task manager. I thought maybe it was a setting but sometimes it doesn't take me to my homepage and sometimes it does. Does anyone know how I can consistently go to browser and be at the page I was on when I last left the browser? I want it to restart via my task manager at the times I have it set to but I need to be able to press home, carry out various functions and still have the same website up. I'm almost positive its user error but I don't know what to do. And yes I used the goddammed stupid search function. Thanks for any help...
Android has a built in task manager itself, as well, that closes apps as need be to free up RAM for current processing. As well, if you have a 3rd party task killer, it can get pretty dicey, even if you have browser "excluded". Also, keep in mind that your task manager uses up RAM itself, and in all honesty is not needed unless you really want to close tasks, and in that case just use Astro.
Anyways, 99.9% of the time the browser is where I left it at. I would say 100%, but I can't be 1000% certain the browser has never been closed by the built in task manager.
I remember having that problem constantly with my G1 but haven't run into it yet with my N1. As the guy before said, its likely that the memory manager is killing the browser app. Here are a few questions I would look into:
1. Are you using an advanced launcher? This can open a NEW window, but won't close an old one
2. How many apps do you have installed? The more apps you have the more that will boot on startup, eating away at memory
3. How many messages do you have? Maybe there are so many that the messaging app is logging all the memory.
4. Are you running CM5 with the highmem hack? If not, this sounds like a good excuse for you to root.
I've noticed that if you launch the Browser by using Home <Long Press> it often tries to reload some previous page that you were at. If you launch the browser directly from the home screen / app tray, it doesn't do this.
Very weird.
Hi fellas,
Something's been peeving me lately with the Atrix, and it's got to do with its memory handling & auto-killing functionality.
This particular situation has been driving me nuts:
I like to use both the native browser & and the Opera browser. Primarily I use the native browser, which is set as the default, and Opera when I want to check something and I want the full (non mobile) webpage layout and its superior (in my opinion) rendering quality and speed.
So, say I've got Opera open on Engadget or XDA, one or two tabs open. I hit the Home button and open Youtube to look something up. Finish the video, hit the Home button again, and launch Opera, and it has exited already and has to reload my tabs again. This of course can cause issues like losing my place in the page or a flash video I had paused, or a message I was typing and wasn't done with.
In this simple example, all I did was launch a browser, open 2 tabs (40-60 or maybe even 80 MBs of RAM usage, depending on page complexity), hit the Home button, launch the YouTube player (30 to 50 MBs RAM usage), hit the Home button again and Opera's already been killed.
OS Monitor shows there's about 470 MBs of RAM free.
What gives? Checking the autokill settings it shows that the OS will kill empty processes when free RAM hits 82 MBs of free RAM (default settings, haven't messed with them)
This behavior doesn't happen only right after a fresh reboot. Once I've opened a few apps, google readers, twitter, facebook, camera/gallery, browser etc., it happens every time. I say this because, while I'm not a programmer (beyond high school level C++ and general computer curiosity), from what I understand by watching the app life cycle videos on Google's Android programmer site, if Opera and YouTube were the last apps to be launched, they should have the highest priority in being kept in memory and not being killed, and previously open apps should be killed off to reclaim memory before them.
I found that using Gemini app manager I can set an app to not be killed automatically, and while I understand that it's not recommended that this is done by end users, it does work, and I use the Exit button in Opera to exit it once I'm done using it.
It just seems ridiculous that I always have between 350-450 of free RAM available to the system, while apps that I use often end up being killed in the background.
Before someone jumps on me, I understand that Android apps are designed to be shut down and reopened seamlessly. My annoyance stems from the behavior of a phone that has 836 MBs of RAM to work with, and about 570 available on startup (I've frozen several motorola processes I don't use, such as the social network integration and home launcher).
I just tried what you did (open opera, loaded bbc and endgadget, watch a youtube video than returned to opera) and opera retained everything including webpage, where I have scrolled to etc. I would suggest you to unfreeze the moto apps and try again, maybe that is what is causing the problem. Sorry I could not be of greater help =(
I'm not disagreeing with you -- like I said, it's not the case after a fresh reboot, or perhaps when not using the phone heavily. It had been a couple of days since rebooting the phone for me, and kept happening all evening long every time I switched apps.
Still, even when I force keep Opera open through the Gemini third party app manager, and while opening other apps, the RAM usage never goes below 300. The OS is overly aggresively in keeping RAM free, and considering it never falls below 100 MBs free of RAM, it shouldn't be shutting down apps EVER -- at least according to the autokill levels. Is there something else I should be looking at in determining when Android kills apps open in the background?
Was it just a fluke due to memory leaks, etc?
Edit:
Further research shows that Gemini app manager doesn't stop it from being killed, but rather removes it from its own auto task kill list (which I don't use). Seeing Opera stay open for a while after a fresh reboot shows that after two or three days of being used, the phone's memory management gets bogged down & that's what caused the very short app lifespan.
I wouldn't mind rebooting more frequently if it wasn't for that damned battery jumping issue.
Hi,
I likes to use Weather and twitter,FB apps of Win8.But hot to close them after opening them?I have to go to Task manager to kill them.
When i go to task manager there was Suspended written in left side of Application name.
What does it indicate?
What is difference between Suspend & Killing??
Sorry for Bad English
My basic understanding is that it is sort of like a mobile OS (Android, iOS...). Suspended apps are kept in RAM for quick resume but not actively processed. They can also be cleared from memory automatically as soon as it is needed for something else. In theory, you shouldn't have to worry about it, just let it do it's own thing. In practice, task manager is there if something goes wrong.
Correct, Supended apps are held in memory, but they do not use any processor nor do they have any effect on battery life. Very effecient way of multitasking like Windows Phone 7.5.
someone tweeted about it to Sam Moreau in channel9.
and he explained people have to stop thinking about "closing" an app and have to close apps to get your computer work fast. of course they have to tweak it.
and difference with killing, its apps are suspended so they eat some memory but its not like it will kill your memory.
with all apps suspended and all, still I use like 10-15% less memory than windows 7. which is amazing
This is not completely true. Several days ago, I was playing with Windows 8 and I have noticed that it got significantly slower. So I opened a task manager and weather app was using 60% of the CPU. In background. I am not sure, what was doing but I guess that it was drawing weather animation?
Also another drawback is that you cannot control what is in "app switching menu". You just have to keep sliding apps to the right and hope that you find one you are looking for. Apps you don't need don't close and apps you do need might suspend/close.
matejdro said:
This is not completely true. Several days ago, I was playing with Windows 8 and I have noticed that it got significantly slower. So I opened a task manager and weather app was using 60% of the CPU. In background. I am not sure, what was doing but I guess that it was drawing weather animation?
Also another drawback is that you cannot control what is in "app switching menu". You just have to keep sliding apps to the right and hope that you find one you are looking for. Apps you don't need don't close and apps you do need might suspend/close.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
But its because its Dev Preview. and remember these apps are just place holders to have something to show in windows 8. its not like they will be there in the end, since they aren't optimized for example.
so the point is... you will not have to close the app. but since its a dev preview it will have problems. sometimes i cant even type here in IE desktop because it gets slow i guess for the spellchecker. and it wont stay that way in the end, they are fixing all this stuff, adding new features and making awesome apps for stuff like photos, people, messenger hub. stuff like that. but these apps you see like [email protected] and weather are just placeholders.
also developers have to optimize everything for their apps.
and the apps switching is for tablets, the swipe thing. you only click on the left of your screen and it goes to next app. if you pause a second and click again you will go back to your last app. also you can use scroll wheel. and alt+tab and win+tab. and ctrl+win+tab, ctrl+alt+tab.
so you don't have to think these apps you got in dev preview are going to be in RTM or beta. and apps will not be optimized to run nicely (like they do in WP7).
this OS needs work and it will have alot of bugs.
Hi there
So this is my first android device and i was wondering if there's an actual advantage when you completely close apps (swipe them off in the multitasking button screen), as opposed to just let them keep running in the background.
Will the phone use less battery / be faster if you swipe the apps off there? Or is there no noticable difference at all?
Thanks!
jb91 said:
Hi there
Will the phone use less battery / be faster if you swipe the apps off there?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes.
also easier to multitask.
IMO, you should let the built-in memory manager do its job. Free memory is wasted memory, so it will be filled with something else. In fact, the phone could be even slower, especially if you reopen the app.
I don't believe (swipe them off in the multitasking button screen) actually closes/exits the app. I believe it only removes it from the history of open apps.
It would help if for example, you are loading a huge web Page, your signal is bad and u lock your phone. In the background the app will be active = battery + wakelocks
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda premium
Closing app will theoretically increase the battery life, but I personally didn't notice too much on battery unless I have like huge game or page loaded up on the background. I close the apps anyways because it makes multitasking with the recent menu much quicker and less cluttered.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app
Usually it will close the app in the sense that when you restart it, you have to begin from its home screen. I do this when I do on Facebook, say I try to load something and give up, instead of simply going to home I'll close the app. The reason being is because I find Facebook just continues to try do what it was doing after I've left if, and if I have bad signal or its just being plain stupid it will just continue and start eating up cpu time. So I guess you can close apps to ensure its not trying to run user actioned tasks even after you close it.
Sent from my Nexus 4 using xda app-developers app
aletto said:
IMO, you should let the built-in memory manager do its job. Free memory is wasted memory, so it will be filled with something else. In fact, the phone could be even slower, especially if you reopen the app.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
the multitasking view is an exception though, you can safely use it as its not the same as forceclosing, it simply sends a couple of events to the app and it can heed them or not - it may give androids memory manager a hint on what you need and what you dont, though (which should in theory make it better, not worse or slower). well and youre not multitasking at all if you dont use swipe out, the entire function will become a meaningless/useless bunch of apps without your management.
Closing apps can have its advantages and disadvantages..For instance...The Netflix application continues to run in the background even after clicking exit from within the app...The only way to completely close it is by swiping it off on the recent apps tray or by using a task manager
ADVANTAGES:
More free ram= no lag
Less open apps= lesser battery drain
DISADVANTAGE S:
Closing an important system app can cause lags or other problems.
Some user apps that run in the backgroung e.g widgets... will restart automatically thereby making your processor work more
Basically, the best way to handle this is to close only apps you no longer need to use and never use autokill feature built into task managers except u are sure the essential apps are in the task managers ignore list..