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So I just picked up a pair of evo's yesterday.
I got my fiance a white one and me a black one.
I'm new to the whole android scene but not to the hacking scene. I came from the palm pre which lets face it sucks if you don't hack it.
But I was wondering what are some must have apps and/or widgets for the evo.
For me and my fiance alike.
I got a task killer and sms popup and some stuff like that. But what else is there that is going to really make this phone shine?
Let me know. OH and I got the xda app so don't worry about suggesting it lol
And I've used xda in the past with my old windows mobile dash/exaclibur. It's a great community.
Please use the Q&A section. It's there for a reason.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
If someone would be kind enough to move this for me that would be awesome. I didn't see that question and answers thread at the time of posting this. My bad.
Just do some research.
Task killers are a no no.
There are 70,000 apps to choose from, to each their own. Check out appbrain.com for reviews etc.
redditor01 said:
Please use the Q&A section. It's there for a reason.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App
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[sarcasm] excellent response, junior [/sarcasm]
For one, give up on the task killers now. They are redundant and do more harm than good. Task killers are good for one thing in an android device, closing a problem app. Android does a great job of managing tasks all on its own.
My must haves:
Handcent (be sure to disable notifications in the stock messaging app)
Audio Manager
DocsToGo
Root Explorer
Google Earth
Google Voice (I use it for vvm only)
Dropbox
Pandora
Shazam
System Panel
ShootMe
Wireless Tether for Root Users (now in the market )
What's wrong with task killers? I'll take it off cause I trust you guys but just wondering what is the problem with them?
Barcode Scanner
Apps Organizer - Put apps in folders instead of having one long list
Systray Monitor - See percentage of battery left in toolbar
LED Desire Light - lets you use the flash for your camera as a flash light
Google Sky Map
Dolphin Browser - better browser
Shazam - recognizes songs
Pandora
Music Junk - can find just about any song
guitarjockey said:
What's wrong with task killers? I'll take it off cause I trust you guys but just wondering what is the problem with them?
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Do some searching, you will find plenty of good reading on the subject. You may even start in one of the older device forums, there was a lot of discussion on the subject in the CDMA Hero section.
Android manages it's ram and it does it quite well. A task killer is just another app that is always running, it's completely unnecessary and if you don't set it up right you might be killing stuff that you need.
If you want more detail than that I'm sure it will be VERY easy to find..
@xHausx, fwiw I used to be a huge fan of SysTray Monitor but I learned it runs rampant and uses more juice than it deserves. Unless they have updated it to perform more efficiently I had to drop that one from my must haves list when I had my Hero.
I use a task killer and have had good results with it, I just have it ignore everything except stuff I know is not needed and kill it when I am done. If you kill everything stuff will be constantly restarting and draining your battery
nebenezer got most of the must have apps. However, one app you MUST get is AppBrain. Its also a website. What it does is you go to www.appbrain.com, log in with your gmail account, get the app from the android market and then you can surf the Android market through a web browser and select which apps you want. Then go to your phone, open AppBrain, select Manage my apps, and sync. Then you can install all the apps that you just saw on your PC. Very handy and much easier than surfing the entire market on your phone.
Basically, you will want a file explorer like Root Explorer (only useful if you are rooted (which I recommend you do)), Astro File Manager, ect.
If you dont like the Sense UI that comes with your HTC Evo or if you would like to try something else, some other home applications are available. My fav is LauncherPro but another great one is ADW.Launcher. These apps replace your entire home screen and interface with highly customizable interfaces that can be themed and tailored to your expectations.
The stock music app sucks imo. doubleTwist is a great player to replace it until we get froyo.
Another must is Screebl Lite. This app detects how you are holding your phone and will prevent the screen from sleeping until you set it down so that its resting at a 90* angle or a 180* angle and with this you can have the phone's timer set very low to allow for excellent power savings. Mine's set at 15 sec so when Im reading something on the internet, I dont have to keep tapping my screen so that the screen wont dim, turn off, and lock on me.
Here is the list of Apps I use a lot and are must haves for me:
Barcode Scanner
Torrent-fu
Gmail Unread Count
Screebl Lite
doubleTwist Player
Handcent SMS
Dropbox
AppBrain App Market
Pandora Radio
AudioManager Widget
Engadget
ASTRO FileManager
Gmote 2.0 <~ Very cool app if you like to watch stuff on your PC from your bed or couch.
Places Directory
SwitchPro Widget
LauncherPro Beta
XDA
System
Lastly, the whole speculation on task killers is kinda iffy. Some ppl think that killing tasks hurts the battery cause the apps will just then have to restart and that uses more CPU cycles than just leaving it running in the background, and in theory they are right. With a stock, unrooted, HTC Evo, you are going to have bloatware constantly restarting if you use a taskkiller. I used one anyways cause I multitask like a champ and when I finished my session, I ended it with a task killer and then locked my phone and went about my business. Now, what you need to do is pay for and use a program called 'System'. Its amazing. It will show you all the apps running in the foreground, background, system apps, and user set excluded apps. System shows how much CPU time apps are using and how much of a drain it puts on your battery for a period of time which is set by you, the user. It can monitor and show apps that eat battery like a fat kid at mcdonalds. With System, you can add apps to an "excluded" list so that they arnt killed when you run the taskkiller. Very handy app.
Hope this helps. tl;dr.
xHausx said:
I use a task killer and have had good results with it, I just have it ignore everything except stuff I know is not needed and kill it when I am done. If you kill everything stuff will be constantly restarting and draining your battery
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You should definitely check out an app called autostarts, you'd probably like it
HOW COULD I HAVE FORGOTTEN TO MENTION LauncherPro?????
so embarrassing
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 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.
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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?
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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.
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.
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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.
Is it me or is the app management still buggy? I had this problem on OP3 too [emoji848]
I was editing a video, when done I went to SoundCloud to download a music file. Then I went back to recents and the video app had to start again, making me lose the video I made [emoji849]
What is the use of 6, 8 or even 10 GB ram if the most recent app gets killed?
Very frustrating indeed
Yup, likewise. Particularly when the screen is off, background apps get quite aggressively killed. I've seen this for runtastic and cf.lumen.
I have the same problem.
Have you tried disability battery optimization feature?
I read few minutes ago that it can help and I'm going to try this.
You can also lock the app in the multitasking screen, using the 3 dots. I use it for Plus Beat to cover the missing led.
1. You can disable the battery optimization.
2. It may not be the phone but the app itself that is wonky. The reason I can say this is because I often times play a game and take a break to scroll through social media and reply to somethings and go back and the heavy game is still open. Part of that social media is youtube by the way.