Any apps to avoid?

[JArmandB]

My question (should be obvious by the thread title) is are there any apps to completely avoid? Which apps will brick a phone or are completely useless? Which apps might be nefarious in nature? The comments from users on the app store vary so much that it is difficult to tell who is legitimate and who is a troll.

Thanks in advance for the feedback.

 

[Backnblack]

Anything Anti-Virus for sure....

Task-Killers also but that is debatable.

 

[hookbill]

This is controversial, but task killers. Or at least if you do have one (and I do) only use it occasionally to kill an app when necessary. Do not set it up to automatically kill tasks.

 

[mpenda]

I've come upon some programs that caused some grief in terms of many FC's or slow downs.
My advice is to try and keep tabs on what you add and/or update. Then be prepared to back them out in reverse order to see what does what.

After reading posts for a number of months, what causes problems for one, doesn't necessarily cause problems for another. For example, Home++ made my phone almost unbearably slow....yet others don't seem to have issues with it.

Droid shuffle made my phone like a yo-yo.....but I think it was a conflict with some other app installed as others did not have the same problem.

 

[droidberg]

What's the issue with task-killers and antivirus apps?

 

[jbrock98]

I've got lookout mobile and Advance Task Killer app, I know virus chances are low but lookout is free and offer backups of contacts and pics and stuff also they can find ur phone by gps if lost or stolen, and ATK seems like a good idea and something that'd be useful, but I'm not very android savy so I wouldn't know if these apps are needed, so are they useful at all or they just taking up space and should be deleted? Both of them were highly rated but u can't really go by market ratings and comments I know, but I'm interested in hearing on why they ain't needed

 

[jcardona1]

anything that's rates less than 4 stars on the market!

 

[droidberg]

What's the issue with task-killers and antivirus apps?

Ahem. :icon_eek:

 

[droidnut803]

Just thought I would mention Mabilo Wallpapers as an app that creates rediculous amounts of cache. I used it for about 10 min looking at wallpapers and picked ONE wallpaper and my phone seemed laggy and I even cleared cache with my CacheMate but it was still laggy. I went and looked at Mabilo app and it had accumulated 7.33 (MB) of cache! I uninstalled it I don't want an app that creates that much cache with very little use. Mabilo Ringtones also creates cache fast but not nearly as much as the Wallpaper one. Just thought I would throw this in the pile of not good apps.

 

[GameBoiye]

What's the issue with task-killers and antivirus apps?

Ahem. :icon_eek:

Antivirus - The problem is there really are no viruses out there right now, and because of the way the android OS is designed, none of these antivirus apps will even block a virus properly. Basically, the only thing these apps do at the moment is eat up all your processing power and drain the battery a lot, many report nearly 50%-75% battery loss when using them. I wouldn't doubt it if one of them even does things like steal your contacts or personal information since you grant them complete access to everything on your phone when you install one.

As for task-killers, the thing is the background apps do not take any extra battery, unless it is doing something like playing music, but in most cases it is completely paused and taking no battery or processing power. Also, the Android OS will automatically close things when it needs more memory, so using a task killer to close everything to get a "clean" feel really isn't necessary because the OS would have done that anyway. Having a task killer isn't necessarily bad as it does save you a few steps to stop an app in rare cases you have to, but if you set any of them to automatically kill apps all it does is drain your battery to free up space the OS would have freed up for you anyway.

Does that answer your question?

 

[cisco0910]

Shop savvy was a HUGE battery drain for me and is known to be with many others as well

 

[droidberg]

GameBoiye, thank you so very much. I have noticed some serious battery drain, and just deleted my antivirus and have moved my icons around to where my task killer(s) are somewhere I have to go out of my way to use.

It'll be interesting to see how my Droid performs without them, as the guy at the Verizon store installed Advanced Task Killer saying it was a 'must have' when I bought my Droid. The antivirus I installed being PC minded.

Again, thanks heaps for the explanation.

 

[panthers89fan90]

Like somebody else who posted in this thread, I use lookout mobile as well. I turn off anti-virus though in the program and when I install something, it scans it and everything. I really only got lookout mobile because of the back-up features. It has some pretty good back-up features actually. It can show you where your phone is through gps and even make a loud sound so you can find your phone easier if you lost it. It can make a loud sound even if you put your phone on silent or vibrate.