Develop Bugs

Task manager or no task manager

When I got my desire it was stable and fast the more I put on it the slower it gets . I've tried numerous task killers and some of them screw the phone up . On one thread someone suggested leaving the phone to manage its own background programs . What does everyone thing is it better with no task manager ?
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My personal choice is to leave taskiller off the desire. I put a taskiller on and almost immedietly the phone started acting wierd eventually getting into some sort of loop rebooting itself. After many reboots it eventually gave me enough time to uninstall the taskiller. Obviously that was the problem as it has never repeated itself since. My phone runs fine without it.

I really cannot understand why people use task killers. As I have said before if you are a real expert and you have a badly behaved program that you have to use you might just have to use of a task killer.
If you are not a real expert or are even asking the question don't use one. You will almost certainly end up with worse performance and decreased battery life.
I have 60 plus applications on my Desire and don't suffer any slowdowns or other problems. There is just no need for task killers/managers. This is NOT windows!
Android has a built in task killer. It's pretty good and IMHO difficult to improve on.

Kill Task Killers!!
Agree with others, you only need it to kill a rogue app without reset.

I have around 100 apps and the only semi-slowdown I can feel is by putting complex widgets and live wallpapers together. Otherwise I've tried some of these task killers and even killing all the 20-30 processes 'frozen' or active in the background had no effect.
Still I keep it in order to kill those badly designed applications that have some glitches in going back to the main screen or rarely get stuck.
I would think that if you experience some problems they are not related to the quantity of applications open in background, but rather by a single one that has some design flaw.

andycted said:
I have around 100 apps and the only semi-slowdown I can feel is by putting complex widgets and live wallpapers together. Otherwise I've tried some of these task killers and even killing all the 20-30 processes 'frozen' or active in the background had no effect.
Still I keep it in order to kill those badly designed applications that have some glitches in going back to the main screen or rarely get stuck.
I would think that if you experience some problems they are not related to the quantity of applications open in background, but rather by a single one that has some design flaw.
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Well said.
The trouble is people use a task killer when they don't have a problem. They just kill apps. without a clue what they are doing.
I repeat don't use a task killer until you really have too.

and what about battery life?is too many running apps affecting battery?

polystirenman said:
and what about battery life?is too many running apps affecting battery?
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Doesn't affect battery at all. Almost all apps. are suspended in the background when you move away from them. Task killers are the major cause of poor battery performance as killed apps. then have to be reloaded instead of resumed. Try switching between say six applications, and using them, with and without task killing. I bet you will see a massive performance gain without the task killer.

polystirenman said:
and what about battery life?is too many running apps affecting battery?
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If an application keeps going in the background in some way/service it's because it's meant to be, like an updating rss feed reader, a live wallpaper, an email client pulling mail from the server, widgets or music player streaming/playing music. If you don't want those to run in the background you obviously should set them not to update, remove them from the desktop, stop them manually, etc.
Otherwise every other application you open and then leave when you switch to another application, gets stopped and 'frozen' in the state it had so that when you switch back to it or reopen it, you find it in the same state, giving you the impression of having been running in the background (but it didn't).
It's a smart way to combine the speed of single-running applications in dumb iphones and the flexibility of more complex os like WinMo. It's also apparently the same way as WP7 will work.
Like mentioned above by killing processes you mostly cause disruption in the pre-ordered way they work and probably cause more battery usage since they have to restart from scratch for the most part. More importantly real-time monitoring of processes and auto-killing them is most likely eating battery a lot since every real time monitoring does that, like many real time battery widgets and such.

Ok.thx for answers guys.i am geting rid of task killer right now.

Same here .. I'm a techie on most things obviously not Android must try harder !
Must admit did complete hard reset yesterday got rid of task killer after first posts phone seems more stable
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I have a task killer, but only for killing appliactions which aren't written good and causes some lag or they don't want to close..

I just looked at the comments on the Advanced Task Killer (free, high in the list in the Market).
I wanted to believe you guys here at XDA. But I went trough the comments on that ATK and 95% was 4 to 5 stars. All with reply's like:
"must have app"
"should be included in Android"
"doubled my battery life"
Now if SO many people say that, I can't imagine that they are all wrong. Why would they all lie?
I myself have been using that ATK for a while, killing only some things that don't close (like games,Facebook or Twitter, etc...)... battery life is still not as good as I would like it to be, but I only have had my Desire for a week.
Are you guys REALLY sure that stopping to use ATK will improve battery life?

XDA mark said:
I just looked at the comments on the Advanced Task Killer (free, high in the list in the Market).
I wanted to believe you guys here at XDA. But I went trough the comments on that ATK and 95% was 4 to 5 stars. All with reply's like:
"must have app"
"should be included in Android"
"doubled my battery life"
Now if SO many people say that, I can't imagine that they are all wrong. Why would they all lie?
I myself have been using that ATK for a while, killing only some things that don't close (like games,Facebook or Twitter, etc...)... battery life is still not as good as I would like it to be, but I only have had my Desire for a week.
Are you guys REALLY sure that stopping to use ATK will improve battery life?
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Read this article:
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/

it's the placebo effect. A While ago there was a thread on a winmo forum for a new overclocking application. It had tons of "amazing", "must have", "goes way faster", comments, it became incredibly popular. then the developer made public the fact that it was a social experiment and the application did absolutely nothing other than having a nice interface for reporting fake cpu .
As said if you have a single bad-behaving application (which is very rate) only kill or rather uninstall it. Games don't run in the background, battery becomes great after one-two weeks, but still you can't expect it to run for 10 hours of continuous heavy usage. Buy a second battery if you need that

XDA mark said:
Now if SO many people say that, I can't imagine that they are all wrong. Why would they all lie?
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No one is saying they are lying - personally I see it more as a placebo effect, but I do understand there are certain situations where task killers come into there own. Having owned 3 Android phones though, I can say that in my case leaving Android to do its own thing works very well for me - I don't believe that it actually increases battery life significantly, but I do firmly believe it improves the overall stability of the platform.
One thing that probably should be added, is that using swap on an Android device will cause problems with Androids own internal resource management because it cannot distinguish between real memory and the virtual memory made available using swap. See here for more details. I wouldn't be at all surprised if those people who get the most "benefit" from task killers are also using swap.
Regards,
Dave

Task Killer Apps, good or not???

I am a noob when it comes to android phones so anything will help! I have been told and pretty sure I read something about task killers being bad for your android phone??? Is this true? I currently use Advanced Task Manager free. Is this a good task manager? If not does anyone know of one thats better. I tried to search the forumn but was unable to find anything on this subject...I'm probably just searching wrong. Any knowledge will help!

Try searching the Q&A forum
Don't use task killers is the bottom line.
Use Google search to find out about google and task killers.

avoid them like the plague

Not. It's stepping on Androids toes. If you really need a kill an app (froze or its just using a lot of battery), you can do it in Android itself in Applications.

i noticed i acctually get more battery life with out a task killer, android will close out programs as it needs the memory any way so have had better performance with out it. the Sprint rep actually installed mine on my phone when i bought it so was suprised to learn all this at first but has long sense proven true

Been using Advanced Task Manager since I had my G1 and have not noticed any negative effects. The browser alone takes up a considerable amount of interal memory and does not close on exit. Task managers are good as long as you know how to use them and exclude system applications or user apps that you want to stay running like widgets and such. They may not improve battery life that much, but they help free up internal memory. However, if you're running a Froyo rom, they're pretty much useless until the app devs update the way they work. Froyo doesnt allow them to kill the app, just background data.

Here's some pretty clear literature on why you absolutely do not need them.

While I agree that a task killer is not needed it is not bad. I mean using one wont cause damage to your phone or anything. Some people get better battery with one and some get better battery without. I just avoid task killers because I had a bad experience. I use my phone as an alarm and one day it did not go off because I had killed the clock app. Ofcourse you can use a task killer and not have this problem by setting apps to ignore but after several weeks of not using it I noticed my battery is not better or worse so to each his own.
BTW I also used advanced task manager and thats a perfectly good task manager if you do decide to keep using it.

Best thing you can do is install and use it for a couple days to see if you like it. I have used one since my Droid and would not consider uninstalling. I notice an immediate improvement in the smoothness of my phone while using, and a noticeable choppiness when not using. Your mileage may vary, but I would give it a shot for yourself vs. just listening to others opinions.

87Octane said:
While I agree that a task killer is not needed it is not bad. I mean using one wont cause damage to your phone or anything.
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+1
If you kill a task and free up memory, Android just fills up that memory again with a program of its own choosing. If it needs the memory, it intelligently pulls programs out of memory on its own.

Task Killers and 2.2

So I upgraded to 2.2 with the downloadable rom yesterday and was wondering what is going on with the Task killers. I read on some of the comments for the app that on 2.2 task killers are not needed for some reason or another, can anyone confirm??

zackhow said:
So I upgraded to 2.2 with the downloadable rom yesterday and was wondering what is going on with the Task killers. I read on some of the comments for the app that on 2.2 task killers are not needed for some reason or another, can anyone confirm??
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Task killers were never needed and can actually do more harm than good. Plenty of information on that floating all over the net and here on the forums. With Froyo, they are definitely not needed, as it has improved memory management, which means it is better at figuring out what tasks to leave running and which ones to kill. Just let Android take care of tasks for you. If you do a factory reset and don't install a task killer, reboot every so often instead, you will see a great performance boost on any version of Android and better battery life. Task killers generally do nothing for battery life, as most tasks aren't using battery, only memory. The only time that tasks use battery most times is when they are actively accessing your location or using data. So just limit what apps can do those things in the background through their settings and you'll get great battery life without screwing up your system.

I guess I never really tested how my battery did without the task killer seeing how that was one of the first apps I got. I will agree that if i restarted my phone I saw a little performance/battery boost. Thanks for the tips, gonna remove the app.

Now I agree with superlinkx but DAMN if Sprint bloatware apps aren't up constantly on their own and running. Now i'm not talking about the basic stuff but Sprint Navigation (big one...try leaving Google Maps open and see what it does to your battery) plus a few of the others. I know it's cute to say Task Killers are irrelevant in Android...but I think that applies to Stock Android more so than a HTC Sense Android. I have a task killer setup to auto-kill safe all the sprint stuff when the screen is turned. I noticed a big jump in battery performance. Just my .02 though, every phone seems to be a bit different.

[Q] Whats the final verdict with "APP KILLERS"

I read and watch so many contradicting things about this subject, I just cannot seem to understand the truth..
I know Android works off of a linux type of OS, and that the memory function is superior to many others..
I read that having any app killer is actually bad because it drains your battery even more than if you don't have it, that the apps running in the background aren't really running as the memory or most of it is now running the application you're using.
Now what if the app killer program has a function that lets you disable the auto kill, I assume that is the part that runs and drains the battery?
would it be good then? or is it still bad?
Finally if so, do I even bother to close out the applications after a full days use?
It just seems very confusing when a large group of people tell you NO and a large group of people tell you YES.
and its reputable places too, not just amatures
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVWZFNHq0uQ

I would just like to add to your confusion by saying that I read that the new Android 2.2 API disables the ability to "kill" apps. It can kill background services or something to that effect, so the program is still in memory, but not actively performing operations or something. That's all paraphrased from a 3 month old memory, so take it with a grain of salt, but if that is true, is there any point to a Task Killer if you have Froyo?

Actually, thinking about a reply gave me a good idea. More on that some other time
Long story short: it all depends.
Short story long:
Anyways, task killers are not inheritly bad, but they are "dangerous". How dangerous depends entirely on how you use them. In general I would say, if you have a device with sufficient memory available, I would only use a task manager to manually kill games (only) that you played but are no longer playing, or some apps if you understand what they do and how they work. Generally we refer to task killers that do not have an automatic component as task managers instead of killers.
One danger is how the app is killed. If it is not killed "gracefully" corruption may occur. This is very rare to occur, though. Apps will almost always be killed gracefully.
Another danger is killing apps that are tied to background services. In most task killers (if not all) there is no way to see if they have such a background service. What most task killer display is actually only visible components of applications. However, killing them will also kill the background services. This may prompt Android to just restart it, but this time invisibly, and you just wasted quite some CPU (not to mention time) to save a little bit of memory you won't miss. Some services are hefty on the initialization but light on running on purpose, and this will make the effect bigger. Another option is that the service simply no longer runs -as it is NOT restarted- and some part of your phone may not behave as you expect it to. Common sense helps here. For example, you could kill the browser like this, but killing a system service app like (I assume) SetCPU, JuiceDefender, etc will generally be a bad idea. Automated task killers do not usually distinguish between these.
Now, Android's internal killer does distinguish between these things (and many more important factors). Say you are in this situation:
- A is running in the foreground
- B is in the background and has a service
- C is in the background
- D is in the background
If we run low on memory, Android will kill C and D before killing B, and it will kill B before killing A. Which is pretty much exactly how we want it done. Android will know when it is necessary to do this. An automated task killer may for example kill B. But B might automatically restart it's invisible parts. Then the automated task killer is in the same situation again, and will shortly after that kill C or D. This operation just wasted a whole bunch of CPU cycles!
Keep in mind, that if an application is not specifically built to do something while it is not in the foreground (i.e. directly visible on your screen), it will not actually be executing any code at all. It will just take up some memory. This is a good thing, because if you go to this app again it will still be exactly as you left it, without the app having to go through all the loading and initialization steps again. How much effect that has depends on the app, obviously. You should see this more as a cache, or ramdisk, or something similar. Well-built apps do generally not have a negative effect on CPU or battery use when they are not in the foreground. They would only use background resources if truely needed.
There is no noticable negative side effect on battery to this. If Android needs the memory and it doesn't have any to spare (for example for your foreground application), it will simply kill off one or more of the background applications.
Also keep in mind that if you "close" an app by using the back button, on many devices and ROMs this will actually close the application instead of keeping it in the background. There is no foreward button, after all.
Now, to the battery issue. I have seen, heard, and read endless complaints by many users regarding poor battery life, RAM being full (there is hardly any reason to care, on a proper firmware), etc. and that these task killers help them. The fact is, that 95 times out of 100 these users are running "a bunch of crap". Because make no mistake, there are a lot of crap apps, widgets, even complete custom ROMs out there. Using system resources when they don't need to, using background services when they don't need to, constantly polling data instead of being event based, etc. Just badly done stuff.
Finding the culprit is often difficult, though in my personal experience (your mileage may vary) the culprit is most often a app+widget combo rather than a bar app. That is, unless you install a serious hack (again, like CPU speed managers, battery savers, etc) and configure them exactly how they shouldn't be configured for your usage situation, with all the resulting adverse effects. When someone I know personally has these issues, the first thing I have them do is uninstall all apps that provide widgets. You would be surprised how often that has solved the issue altogether.
Automated task killers are a band-aid solution in these cases. Of course, there also exist cases of improperly configured Android memory management in the firmware, and if you have a device with very little RAM this can also be problematic, but these are much less common than the user installing crappy stuff (though sometimes it is the carrier with bad bloatware). Usually, automated task killers just fight symptoms, not the cause.
My advice would definitely be, check what you're running and what you install. If you're a bit techsavvy, use a task manager, but only kill tasks manually. Never "kill all" unless absolutely necessary, and don't run it automated unless you are absolutely sure the developer is worth his salt. Even then, don't make a habit out of killing apps manually. Do make a habit out of exiting apps (especially games) with the back button, instead of for example using the home button to switch to the app launcher.
A case can be made for manually killing apps as it gives you more control over what is killed when, but the time you would spend doing it is worth more than what you would save (generally). Also keep in mind that the automated task killer itself will also be running a background process to check on your situation and kill apps, and thus may actually be part of the problem instead of the solution.
@nukedukem: I'm running Froyo and the task manager I'm using kills apps just fine when I tell it to do so...

I say they are bad unless you have rogue apps. And even then they are not needed. Hit Menu-Settings-Applications-Manage Apps-Running Tab-Click App-Kill. But instead of that, you can make a widget on your homescreen that goes straight to it. Long press homescreen-shortcuts-settings-manage applications. Done. I use that when I want to kill a game or something eating CPU. Otherwise I just let Android do its thing. Also, I like Watchdog Lite. It monitors apps using the CPU and alerts you when one exceeds the threshold and gives you option to kill or ignore(app may have a legitimate reason for hogging CPU) the app in question. This is good because app or processes are really only hurting or effecting the battery when they are using the CPU, not RAM. However, another option for task management is Autokiller in the Market. It allows you to change Android's minfree settings, or internal task manager, to kill off apps sooner. I set mine to be aggressive. I actually never worry about task management. Unless Watchdog beeps at me. I think the last time I killed an app was 3 weeks ago. I remember the day Autokiller came out well. I had the HTC Hero back then. To do what that app does I had to change them manually each boot and eventually a script was made to change the settings. Those early days of Android were so much fun. ;D
If anymore questions let us know.

They are just like everything, use in moderation. I use mine all the time but I don't mess with system services and only use it to kill stuff I've been using.
And yes they still work in 2.2 as long as the app is not active

Task killer on miui

What's the problem with using task killers on android?
I'm pretty sure I heard somewhere that it slows your phone down or something?
I set up advanced task killer, with all my frequent apps and widgets unchecked, and its definitely improved the speed of the phone.
I now have around 100mb free ram all the time, whereas before I had around 50mb. I am running bulletproof miui.
Thanks for answering my question

The main problem with task killers is that Android already manages memory pretty well on its own. Further, if you kill a process that isn't supposed to be killed, it will just respawn and try to continue what it was doing.
Also, unlike Windows, there is no real performance benefit to having free memory. It can be argued that having memory full is actually better for performance in some cases (like for going back to a recently used app).
Another thing about task killers, there have been cases where they kill processes that shouldn't be killer, including important system processes, and can cause some really strange/bad behavior on your phone.
http://lifehacker.com/5650894/android-task-killers-explained-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
There are people who still swear by task killers. But I find their claims of better performance anecdotal at best. And testing shows little benefit, if any, or that it can even hurt battery life:
http://lifehacker.com/5862994/real-world-test-show-that-android-task-killers-are-still-useless