Advanced Task Killer

[Droyd]

Advanced Task Killer........

Two questions,

1. Do I need it on my Droid?

2. What do I do with it???

Please excuse my stupidity, but I like to know what an application that is installed on my device is actually doing.

[Troy]

1. Some say yes, Some say no.
2. Use it to kill apps running in the background to free up memory to speed your phone up.

[Nonie3234]

I prefer Advanced Task Manager. You can view the applications that are running, and stop them if you need to. If you notice that certain applications continuously launch themselves, you can change their settings to update less frequently. There were a couple of applications that I ended up uninstalling because they refused to behave.

It just gives you a little more control over your system. I also like "Quick Settings" and "Timeriffic" - one for quick access to my settings and the other to change settings automatically by time of day.

[640k]

Do you need it? No.

Is it useful? Depends.

There are people on this forum that have reported ATK taking up resources and subsequently slowing their phone down. Don't obsess about every little thing running in the background and read the Understanding Battery Life thread.

[Nonie3234]

Yeah, that's pretty much why I got the Advanced Task Manager instead. I had heard too many people having a bad experience with ATK, but I heard no negatives about ATM.

[Schimm]

I find sometimes my phone bogging down to a near standstill.....then go to ATK and find a boatload of apps running. Kill the apps and things are back to normal. This is a problem that I occasionally experience on the alternative homes (my fav ATM is Home++) which are still going through growing pains. So, yes, it can be useful IMO.

[DroidFan]

Since I got ATK, I haven't had the freezes/reboots that I've had prior to installing ATK. I don't know if this is a coincidence or not, but prior to having ATK (I've had it just over 2 weeks), I was rebooting about every 4-5 days... now, I've only had to reboot once in the last two weeks....

[cherie622]

I just loaded ATK about and hour ago. We'll see what happens!

[Dream]

I personally think its a waste of time to kill apps. The OS is designed to kill off apps when more memory is needed.

[syntax53]

I agree with it being a waste to kill most apps. When I first got my droid I installed a task killer and religiously killed tasks. About two weeks ago I stopped using it and I've noticed no difference in my phone's battery life or performance.

I would like a task killer program where I would "opt in" tasks to kill instead of having to "exclude" tasks from not being killed. For example, I'd like to put the dolphin browser and a couple games/apps on the list so that when I exit them I can quickly force them closed. All of the task killers I've seen so far require you to set up an exclusion list instead of creating an inclusion list. I don't want to have to keep checking the list.