Help - Task Managers/ Task Killers

[ragbayani]

I found out that task managers are bad for the phone. I was wondering if I should uninstall the one I have right now (Estrongs Task Manager) or if I should use it less often. Also should I use the Task Manager that came with the phone since I have the Droid 2 Global? What should i do? thanks

 

[negropy]

They're not necessarily bad, just not necessary for anything. Your phone will decide which processes to kill or leave running based on usage and other factors. I would recommend something like watchdog if you want to keep tabs on what is consuming the most resources in your phone.

Sent from my R2D2

 

[GSXRADDICT]

Task killers will eat up battery too most of the stuff it kills will restart and that uses more resources then just letting it run. Like what was said in thee previous post android is awesome at managing this on its own. If you wanna get better use of battery download spare parts from the market and you will see what consumes the most and you can adjust it or eliminate it.

*Droid Life*

 

[MsJones]

I am new to android but not smartphones. At first I felt that I needed a task killer but after some research and trial and error I see that might not be the case. My battery life did not improve all that much when I had one. I found that limiting my use of various widgets helped a lot. I log on to Facebook only when I need to. I do keep aim and Twitter running but im still getting decent battery life. I uninstalled the task killer I had and just go into my settings to see what is consuming the most power. I found that my display is consuming the most power even on the lowest setting.

Sent from my DROID2 using DroidForums App

 

[pool_shark]

Not all task killers are the same.

I have ES file manager which has a task killer. It does not run until you invoke it.
The task killers that are bad are the ones that run automatically repeatedly killing tasks that the OS restarts.

 

[miketoasty]

I may be able to shed a little more light onto your situation. Task killers are built to stop programs running in the background. Now this sounds like a wonderful idea except programs in the System folder will automatically restart themselves when closed. This is for things such as phone and messaging, so your phone does not randomly kill your Phone.apk whilst you are in the middle of a call. But! If you know what you are doing you can turn your task manager into a good thing! Programs sitting in the background may not be using a lot of battery but they are still using some so say I play a game of FreeSudoku, then press the menu button. FreeSudoku is still open in the background just in case I want to get right back into it I don't need to open the program and go through a few extra menus, basically it saves my point. Well as you might think this is still using battery. So what the OS does to fix this is as so many new programs are opened it will eventually close out the older programs, so if I close this out open 8 new programs, the phone will pick the oldest (FreeSudoku) and close it out to save battery. Well this is good unless you have open programs using more than just a little battery.
So how do you fix this? Well you can go to settings and force close any apps you don't want running for an extended period. Or, you can get a task manager and have them close NON SYSTEM apps for you (As stated above system apps will restart themselves automagically). To fix this just open your task manager and close out all the apps (Yes just listen to what I have to say), close out all the apps and don't use your phone for about 20 minutes. Then go back into task manager and look. Many apps you just closed have reappeared. Those would be your system only apps. Go ahead and add these to your "No kill zone" and anything else that comes up should be good to kill.


This would also be why bloatware is so bad. Even though you may never use CityID, AmazonMP3, kindle, VZ navigator, etc. will slow down your phone. Verizon puts these in your system folder so even though you may never open them they are still "Running" in the background.


None of this may be true but im pretty sure through my travels that this is.

 

[Backnblack]

This would also be why bloatware is so bad. Even though you may never use CityID, AmazonMP3, kindle, VZ navigator, etc. will slow down your phone. Verizon puts these in your system folder so even though you may never open them they are still "Running" in the background.

Being loaded into memory and actually running are totally different.

Take a read here http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-applications/65483-task-killers-answer-google-developers.html

 

[miketoasty]

This would also be why bloatware is so bad. Even though you may never use CityID, AmazonMP3, kindle, VZ navigator, etc. will slow down your phone. Verizon puts these in your system folder so even though you may never open them they are still "Running" in the background.

Being loaded into memory and actually running are totally different.

Take a read here http://www.droidforums.net/forum/droid-applications/65483-task-killers-answer-google-developers.html

Hmm alright, interesting, just thought that to be the case since my phone seems to run much more swimmingly without them installed. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[pool_shark]

I may be able to shed a little more light onto your situation. Task killers are built to stop programs running in the background. Now this sounds like a wonderful idea except programs in the System folder will automatically restart themselves when closed. This is for things such as phone and messaging, so your phone does not randomly kill your Phone.apk whilst you are in the middle of a call. But! If you know what you are doing you can turn your task manager into a good thing! Programs sitting in the background may not be using a lot of battery but they are still using some so say I play a game of FreeSudoku, then press the menu button. FreeSudoku is still open in the background just in case I want to get right back into it I don't need to open the program and go through a few extra menus, basically it saves my point. Well as you might think this is still using battery. So what the OS does to fix this is as so many new programs are opened it will eventually close out the older programs, so if I close this out open 8 new programs, the phone will pick the oldest (FreeSudoku) and close it out to save battery. Well this is good unless you have open programs using more than just a little battery.
So how do you fix this? Well you can go to settings and force close any apps you don't want running for an extended period. Or, you can get a task manager and have them close NON SYSTEM apps for you (As stated above system apps will restart themselves automagically). To fix this just open your task manager and close out all the apps (Yes just listen to what I have to say), close out all the apps and don't use your phone for about 20 minutes. Then go back into task manager and look. Many apps you just closed have reappeared. Those would be your system only apps. Go ahead and add these to your "No kill zone" and anything else that comes up should be good to kill.


This would also be why bloatware is so bad. Even though you may never use CityID, AmazonMP3, kindle, VZ navigator, etc. will slow down your phone. Verizon puts these in your system folder so even though you may never open them they are still "Running" in the background.


None of this may be true but im pretty sure through my travels that this is.

This is not entirely accurate.
I have several apps that I installed, they are not in /system/app and they start randomly.

For example:
statefarm
vocalyst
seesmic

It's rare that I start either of those apps, yet they appear in the running apps list regularly.

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

I may be able to shed a little more light onto your situation. Task killers are built to stop programs running in the background. Now this sounds like a wonderful idea except programs in the System folder will automatically restart themselves when closed. This is for things such as phone and messaging, so your phone does not randomly kill your Phone.apk whilst you are in the middle of a call. But! If you know what you are doing you can turn your task manager into a good thing! Programs sitting in the background may not be using a lot of battery but they are still using some so say I play a game of FreeSudoku, then press the menu button. FreeSudoku is still open in the background just in case I want to get right back into it I don't need to open the program and go through a few extra menus, basically it saves my point. Well as you might think this is still using battery. So what the OS does to fix this is as so many new programs are opened it will eventually close out the older programs, so if I close this out open 8 new programs, the phone will pick the oldest (FreeSudoku) and close it out to save battery. Well this is good unless you have open programs using more than just a little battery.
So how do you fix this? Well you can go to settings and force close any apps you don't want running for an extended period. Or, you can get a task manager and have them close NON SYSTEM apps for you (As stated above system apps will restart themselves automagically). To fix this just open your task manager and close out all the apps (Yes just listen to what I have to say), close out all the apps and don't use your phone for about 20 minutes. Then go back into task manager and look. Many apps you just closed have reappeared. Those would be your system only apps. Go ahead and add these to your "No kill zone" and anything else that comes up should be good to kill.


This would also be why bloatware is so bad. Even though you may never use CityID, AmazonMP3, kindle, VZ navigator, etc. will slow down your phone. Verizon puts these in your system folder so even though you may never open them they are still "Running" in the background.


None of this may be true but im pretty sure through my travels that this is.

The problem with your "theory" is that apps in memory do not use power (unless they are location specific apps or rogue apps). Think of a thumb drive, does it take any power to keep an app in it?

Android is going to load apps to almost fill up the available ram. It will continue to do this no matter how many apps you force close. If you are doing this to "speed up" your phone, your time would be much more wisely spend by rebooting your phone every day or so and stop worrying about what apps are running or how much free memory you have.

Here's an article I've posted countless times. It helps most folks to understand how Android manages (or attempts to) memory:

How Android Manages Processes

In Android, processes and Applications are two different things. An app can stay "running" in the background without any processes eating up your phone's resources. Android keeps the app in its memory so it launches more quickly and returns to its prior state. When your phone runs out of memory, Android will automatically start killing tasks on its own, starting with ones that you haven't used in awhile.
The problem is that Android uses RAM differently than, say, Windows. On Android, having your RAM nearly full is a good thing. It means that when you relaunch an app you've previously opened, the app launches quickly and returns to its previous state. So while Android actually uses RAM efficiently, most users see that their RAM is full and assume that's what's slowing down their phone. In reality, your CPU—which is only used by apps that are actually active—is almost always the bottleneck.

Why Task Killers Are (Usually) Bad News

Apps like Advanced Task Killer, the most popular task killer in the Market, act on the incorrect assumption that freeing up memory on an Android device is a good thing. When launched, it presents you with a list of "running" apps and the option to kill as many as you want. You can also hit the Menu button to access a more detailed "Services" view, that lists exactly which parts of each application are "running", how much memory they take up, and how much free memory is available on your phone. This set-up implies that the goal of killing these apps is to free up memory. Nowhere on the list does it mention the number of CPU cycles each app is consuming, only the memory you'll free by killing it. As we've learned, full memory is not a bad thing—we want to watch out for the CPU, the resource that actually slows down your phone and drains your battery life.
Thus, killing all but the essential apps (or telling Android to kill apps more aggressively with the "autokill" feature) is generally unnecessary. Furthermore, it's actually possible that this will worsen your phone's performance and battery life. Whether you're manually killing apps all the time or telling the task killer to aggressively remove apps from your memory, you're actually using CPU cycles when you otherwise wouldn't—killing apps that aren't doing anything in the first place.
In fact, some of the processes related to those apps will actually start right back up, further draining your CPU. If they don't, killing those processes can cause other sorts of problems—alarms don't go off, you don't receive text messages, or other related apps may force close without warning. All in all, you're usually better off letting your phone work as intended—especially if you're more of a casual user. In these instances, a task killer causes more problems than it solves.
What You Should Do Instead

That said, not all apps are created equal. Many of you have used task killers in the past and actually found that after freeing up memory, your phone works a bit better. It's more likely that this is because you've killed a bad app—one that was poorly coded, and (for example) keeps trying to connect to the internet even when it shouldn't. Any performance increase you experience is more likely because you killed the right app, not because you freed up loads of memory (or, in many cases, it's just placebo). Instead of killing all those apps, find out which ones are actually causing the problems. If you really know what you're doing, you may benefit from using a task killer to stop the one or two inefficient-but-loved apps on your phone.
Note, however, that this is still a contested notion. A lot of developers (including ROM builder extraordinaire, Cyanogen) will not even look at your bug reports if you're using a task killer. In this humble blogger's opinion, your best bet is to stay away from regular task killer usage entirely. If you absolutely have to have that one battery-killing app on your phone, though, kill away—just be aware that when you experience a recurring Android bug later on, the task killer may be at fault. Of course, you can just stop using it to determine whether that is or isn't the case.

 

[Shogun613]

In my experience using a task manager/killer, I noticed problems developing within my phone over time. Lately, my Droid was freezing, rebooting, and bricking up when I did a battery reseat. I did a factory reset, loaded some apps back onto the phone, and everything seemed fine. when I reloaded "Advanced Task Manager", the phone started to act up again. I did a little research on the net and basically found out that task managers aren't really supposed to be on an android phone. Once I uninstalled the task manager, my phone started to run like a champ again. I'm convinced that I no longer need or want one.