Database Users

How to prevent OS exiting my applications?

Hi,
I noticed that OS constantly unloads my applications.
Say, I visit some page using IE, then switch to another application, then switch back - it is usually at the same page, but, probably depending on idle time, it sporadically gets closed.
That said, when I go to IE again, it starts afresh on its initial page and I must reload my page again. Needless to say, in most cases this is unacceptable. (extra traffic, so it costs $$, also GPRS could become unavailable etc :x )
How do I PREVENT this behaviour?
Not only IE suffers, any application! Sporadically exits despite of fact there are tons of free memory and I would better free resources with another way than just closing what is required for me.
I have elder device with PocketPC 3.0 (Cassiopeia E-125) and it does NOT behave in such a way. Does not close even it has 4times less memory! Now I understand how nice it is.
While this problem persists, I forced to have both devices with me.
Please help me solving this!
Vadim.

I've noticed the same behavior randomly also. I don't have a fix, but you're not alone.

What ROM version are you using? There was an issue with the earlier ROMS in that there were too many programs running and when you launched another program the OS would terminate a background program to provide the necesssary process space.
The newer ROMs have solved this problem, but CheckNotify and ClearNotify (search the forum) will help with the earlier ROMs.

This is an old problem, related to the number of running processes.
Consult this thread
http://www.ppcw.net/?itemid=1645
which will show you how to solve it. Also the newer roms cut down on the number of processes at startup, which helps.
Surur

Mine is much more random than that described. Sometimes I can have a half dozen apps open with no problem, and sometimes a single app will close itself while I work in the phone or the Today screen.

Carlos said:
Mine is much more random than that described. Sometimes I can have a half dozen apps open with no problem, and sometimes a single app will close itself while I work in the phone or the Today screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Don't forget that we are talking processes, not appications, here. One app. may have many processes and multiple app's may use the same common processes. Therefore, launching one application can generate a number of new processes and that can push you over the limit (e.g. ActiveSync, which launches three or four I recall), so something gets nuked.

I understand, and was looking for a pattern, but there is none. In fact, it seems reversed, as it happens more often while I'm just out and about and less frequenty while the device is in the cradle. Very often it happens after a fresh boot with a single app running.
I may look at it more closely with a process viewer. It's not bugging me enough to make it a priority.

Thank you all for providing many help!
surur said:
This is an old problem, related to the number of running processes.
Consult this thread
http://www.ppcw.net/?itemid=1645
which will show you how to solve it. Also the newer roms cut down on the number of processes at startup, which helps.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That explains it all, many fruitful comments, and a prove that there could be no fix but just temporary solutions to reduce a problem a bit.
It is a bit larger problem in my case, because I use special sotware to support Russian.
Too bad MS can't recognize and fix such a big design mistakes.

Killing Background Processes

After playing around with a process manager, I have found out which processes I can happily kill without effecting any of my applications.
Killing these processes speeds up responsiveness of my device, and the difference is most noticable when rotating the screen.
My question is...does anyone know of a program which can take a 'snapshot' of running processes, and automatically flush any that aren't in that snapshot, rather than me having to go and close them one-by-one? "Sman" used to do this on my old P-Series SonyEricssons so I'm sure it's possible, but after trawling through PocketGear, Handango, Freewarepocketpc, etc I've drawn a blank.
Any ideas greatly appreciated. In the meantime, I seem to be using my process manager a LOT!

hmm
I installed checknotifications, this is actually for 2003 devices but i thought lets give it a go..
It found 39 events???????????????????????????
on my mda 2 i had 9-12
and it found loads of red events. sddeamon based.. hmmmmm
tried to clear it but that doesn't do anything.
hehe
UPDATE ok got it down to 21 events after ticking both options in settings, made the mda pro a bit quicker.. but still to many events i think?

Slow Down on Hero

Hi all,
Had a quick search round these parts to see if anyone has ask about it, and apparently now
I've noticed that the touch flo interface has become really slow again, most notably when bringing down the notification area; it's a good 5 - 8 seconds before it comes down to where my finger is! Another way I can judge it is by playing ThrottleCopter, any lag makes the game unplayable...
The first time, the culprit was Last.fm's offcial app, and gettign rid of it made it all spring-chicken again, but I haven't downloaded any new apps of late...
*Please* don't tell me I need to reboot my phone every week or so to stop it being laggy; That's why I ditch my Tytn II !!!
Many thanks for any help provided, and if you require more info (I'm guessing an app list, or ROM version [Stock from T-mobile]), ask please!

...Does no one else have this problem? It's really bugging me, insofar as that it's becoming unusable without rebooting it again, and not placing calls when tapping a contact in the call history list.

Do you use Peep ?
If you are, log out of Twitter via the social networks section in Settings and try another client like Twidroid (which uses its own independent login)
Made a huge performance difference to me on the initial stock Orange firmware.
Else wait for the T-Mobile v2 firmware or go MoDaCo.

@Joemax:
I don't use Peep or Twitter, and have made sure it's "logged out" in the settings menu, but can't access the Peep settings menu as I haven't (ever) logged on.
Thanks for the reply, as I quite keen to find the source of the problem. The only other thing I've heard thus far is that rooting the phone _can_ give a speed boost, but it's not been confirmed?

Rooting on its own won't speed up your Hero or any handset as far as I know.
But if you root and then replace the firmware with MoDoCo's you will see a speed boost. His ROM is based on the latest HTC firmware release.
The other thing would be to turn off all the background notifications that apps you have put on the Hero are setup to do... not the stock ones, but apps from the Market you have loaded.
Some of these put persistent information in the Notifications panel and these may be slowing down the handset before showing you the panel.
Then enable them one by one gradually until to find the likely culprit.
Some battery monitoring apps and task manager / switching apps, do use too much of the CPU from what I've read.
Worth a try.

Thanks for the help Joemax.
AFAIK, I don't have any non-stock apps that have any b/g notifications, as there aren't a whole lot of apps on my phone (a couple of games, boring utilities like the compass), but I have got the battery status widget, which may be the culrpit... Fingers crossed

Whenever I have used skype my hero lags. I always have to kill skype even when I exited the app correctly. Maybe this applies for you as well? Did you try to kill some apps (check after each kill if performance is better)? this is how I found out the skype issue.

I have TasKiller Full, and I do kill off apps periodically, and haven't noticed skype in the background, although the Last.fm one kept on coming back even after a force kill .
It's a useful app for me (as I use Skype as my main IM), so I'll onyl get rid of it should it be the fault.
Just checked now, as it goes, and there are no non-stock apps running, as it's still slow - taking about 3 seconds for the notification bar to catch up. As for notifications, the only ones I've noticed since the joemax asked the question is Gtalk, Gmail, and the phone ones (sms, missed calls), and the USB one once plugged in.
Oh dear... it's not looking good to find the source, is it? I mean, short of deleting all non-stock apps and putting them back on one by one...

progams that keep running...

I have advanced task killer installed and even after I kill all apps and my phone is just sitting some programs still start up and run.
Such as sprint navigation. It always seems to be running even though i dont use it. I do have an icon for it on my home screen.
Also my visual voice mail is always running even when i have had no voicemails.
Does anyone know why these programs keep running and slowing down my phone?

I don't have the answer to your problem, but I can confirm that you are no the only person experiencing this. I have yet to use Sprint Nav since purchasing my Hero on the 11th, and it always finds a way to creep back onto my running programs list.

I've seen that Sprint Navigation opens with some apps that use GPS, it's weird and I don't understand that, but it doesn't open "on it's own" for me, just with some GPS based applications.

Hi there,
I've seen this also, through using Advanced Task Killer and Task Panel X also. Here are some of the ones I see that pop up a lot in my situation. Please note my comments after them, as sometimes they're fairly vital to keep running.
-HtcIQAgent - HTC something, leave running as negligible RAM gain if killed.
-OMADM - not sure, but think this is a system app also
-Peep - can't kill this at all without it coming back, in ATK anyway.
-Stocks - will keep coming back too, OK to kill tho
-Footprints - also OK to kill
**app.vnotes - this is Visual Voicemail, DONT kill it unless you're OK with not getting notifications!!
**Mail - default Exchange mail app, DONT kill unless you're OK with not getting notifications
**Touch Input - System app, can kill but phone feels a little sluggish if done, so I normally have this one excluded
**providers.htccdma - System app, negligible gain when killed. Leave it be.
This isn't an exhaustive list of course, but some of the apps I've commonly dealt with using both aforementioned apps.

the lag vs apps

Now when installed a lot of apps including juicedefender and advanced task killer (set to aggressive when screen off with lots of exclusions) the lag has become more of an issue.
Now tell me whats the logic behind having installed a lot of apps and a lag? Running several apps multitasked will offcource produce performance-dips but just having them installed?
What exactly is "aggressive" on the task killer anyway? Some people say its just bad to kill tasks.
I have the idea that its the widgets that causes trouble, since they actually needs to run in the background all the time. I noticed today that the fancy-widget got stuck on upboot for like 60 seconds, that caused the 4 buttons below to not load properly. Alto the rather useless "daily brefing" seems to slow down.
I dont want to root and hack with sd-hacks now when froyo is confirmed to be released officially soon.
Do you have experice with sertain apps/widgets causing lag. If so, it would be great to make a list of "bad" apps.
PS, I tested the 30-day navigon today in car and it worked with no problems at all. Fix in 2 seconds and right on track.

robnil said:
Now when installed a lot of apps including juicedefender and advanced task killer (set to aggressive when screen off with lots of exclusions) the lag has become more of an issue.
Now tell me whats the logic behind having installed a lot of apps and a lag? Running several apps multitasked will offcource produce performance-dips but just having them installed?
What exactly is "aggressive" on the task killer anyway? Some people say its just bad to kill tasks.
I have the idea that its the widgets that causes trouble, since they actually needs to run in the background all the time. I noticed today that the fancy-widget got stuck on upboot for like 60 seconds, that caused the 4 buttons below to not load properly. Alto the rather useless "daily brefing" seems to slow down.
I dont want to root and hack with sd-hacks now when froyo is confirmed to be released officially soon.
Do you have experice with sertain apps/widgets causing lag. If so, it would be great to make a list of "bad" apps.
PS, I tested the 30-day navigon today in car and it worked with no problems at all. Fix in 2 seconds and right on track.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I haven't used it in a while, but "spare parts" in the marketplace tells you which apps are consuming your processor IIRC. This will obviously give you a temporary hit to your ability to load and run processes but will let you know more details about your phone that you don't already have and the battery use section of settings obviously only talks about what is using your battery but that isn't going to tell you the whole picture.
I am also someone who says you shouldn't use ATK, at least the way you do, but I have it installed and use it a bit differently. What I try to do is kill all tasks after I've used the marketplace or before I do anything intensive (gaming, GPS tracking) and I kill all apps including ATK. ATK will consume processor, battery and will free up memory which then Android uses to open more tasks you don't need (using processor and battery in the process -> repeat cycle). If you need to free up memory 1-5 times a day I think my way will save maybe 15-30% of your battery over a 24 hour period while costing you less than a minute of hassle (too much for some, sure). Again, I only kill after marketplace (because everything opens to check for updates, AFAIK) and before something that will use heavy memory and processor.

robnil said:
Now when installed a lot of apps including juicedefender and advanced task killer (set to aggressive when screen off with lots of exclusions) the lag has become more of an issue.
Now tell me whats the logic behind having installed a lot of apps and a lag? Running several apps multitasked will offcource produce performance-dips but just having them installed?
What exactly is "aggressive" on the task killer anyway? Some people say its just bad to kill tasks.
I have the idea that its the widgets that causes trouble, since they actually needs to run in the background all the time. I noticed today that the fancy-widget got stuck on upboot for like 60 seconds, that caused the 4 buttons below to not load properly. Alto the rather useless "daily brefing" seems to slow down.
I dont want to root and hack with sd-hacks now when froyo is confirmed to be released officially soon.
Do you have experice with sertain apps/widgets causing lag. If so, it would be great to make a list of "bad" apps.
PS, I tested the 30-day navigon today in car and it worked with no problems at all. Fix in 2 seconds and right on track.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Forgot the first part of your question, forgive me. I believe, the reason for more apps causing more lag is at least 2 fold. There are more apps that can be opened when you have free memory (in the vicious cycle I described above). There is also something that might be a bit unique to our phone, and I've only recently read this, it's a bit of speculation so I'm not trying to pass it off as fact but I think it's likely to be knowledgeable on the issue, even if not completely correct. Samsung's internal storage method is an SD card, that allows extra apps to be written to the internal storage but comes with a trade off of lag due to a potential combination of:
slow random-access
bad partition
I think I'm missing an important reason, I'll try to look and edit.

When I initially got my SGS I loaded it with a heap of apps and suddenly noticed the lag and quick battery drain. Problem was I couldn't track down the culprit.
I recently reset my device and was a bit more organized with what I installed. One of the things I started doing was checking what services were being used in the process which you can find under the manage apps part of the system.
So while you can load apps and they may/may not be killed by android or a task killer, the services will always be running - taking up memory, sometimes cpu, network. Things like weather checking, news checking, even email sync are some examples. These services plus any apps you run are I think what starts the lag. You need to be aware of which apps are also run as services.
Yes, there are some bad apps (last Facebook version was found to be a heavy drain) but I think they tend to add up with all the other services running.
As for 'Aggressive' depends on the app killer but my understanding (with the one I use), is that there is a memory limit before the app is killed. Once the limit is reached on aggressive, it doesn't take much before memory is cleared.
One thing to install is SeePU as this gives an indication of CPU, memory and network on the top menu bar. This also helps when the system lags (usually CPU is high and memory is low) and helps to know when to clean (or what threshold to set).
Hope this helps.