Task killer still seems a must.

[Rotny]

Got my droid 1 about 6 months ago. Went through 2 updates to current 2.2.
Don't rly notice any difference, performance wise.
Cept for background icons disappearing and my battery dies so fast.

Using a task killer seems to help quite a bit with battery life.
So, I'm wondering why everyone says not to use them?

I haven't rooted fyi, it's irritating to me that I have to mod my droid to get it to work well. Especially after 2 updates that have seemingly only made it worse.

Not sure what to do at this point other than learn to live with it until I can upgrade to a droid 2 or x.

 

[Sniper_5]

The FROYO update increases clock speed 50mhz to 600mhz which is a partial reason to worse battery life. Rooting is really the only way to get superior battery life from your droid. I can get 8+ hours of HEAVY use at work surfing on wifi while listening to music. Set CPU is really the only solution I see. Task killers barely put a dent in extending battery life and technically slow the phone down. It's designed to run things in the background to open things faster and smoother. Apps not being used are basically put into a standby or" sleep" mode to help manage power. A task killer won't see this state as its constantly looking to kill other apps. Your really just killing others but you've replaced the space they free up with your task killer. Plus if your a noob and decide to venture into killing system apps etc you can screw things up.

Sent from my Droid using Tapatalk

 

[Redflea]

Android Task Killers Explained: What They Do and Why You Shouldn't Use Them

 

[Darkseider]

Follow these steps to make your Droid experience the best

1. Root the Droid
2. Perfrom a Nandroid backup
3. Format Data/Cache and clear out the Dalvik-Cache
4. Install your choice of the phenomenal ROMs and Kernels out there
5. Install SetCPU and configure
6. Enable Compcache if the kernel supports it
7. Theme away if you are into that
8. ENJOY!

OR if you want to stay stock.

1. Remove the Task Killer and BURN IT! BURN IT WITH FIRE!!!
2. If still slow and yadda yaddda
3. Backup any data you want to keep
4. Do a factory reset and format the SD Card for good measure
5. Download the apps you want again EXCEPT for task killer
6. Enjoy!

There you have it! Not only one but two solutions to your problem.

 

[pc747]

there are rare incidents where a task killer is needed. But that is to kill one task. I would not recommend any form of auto task killers. The droid 2 allows you to turn off background apps to save battery life.

Click menu button
click settings
click data manager
click data delivery
uncheck background data.

apps like gtalk, market, and other apps that run in the background will not work until you turn it back on.

 

[Rotny]

Oops. I posted in the droid 2 forums when I'm talking about my moto droid 1.
Sry!

Also, won't rooting my droid void the warranty?
I can't help but feel like I shouldn't have to mod my droid just to get it to run well. Sry to repeat that but it's an important principle to me.

 

[longboat]

I have the same issues with battery drain. Verizon technician told me they recommend task killers! That was a shock to me. I had removed mine a month ago after reading all the posts.

:icon_eek:

 

[Martin030908]

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

the 'must' is to read this....

 

[mcatdtDroid]

Oops. I posted in the droid 2 forums when I'm talking about my moto droid 1.
Sry!

Also, won't rooting my droid void the warranty?
I can't help but feel like I shouldn't have to mod my droid just to get it to run well. Sry to repeat that but it's an important principle to me.

I can't help but feel like I shouldn't have to mod my car just to get it to run well.




It's not a question of modding it to make your Droid run well, it's a case of modding it to make your droid run BETTER.

 

[BayouFlyFisher]

My current favorite article:

Task Killers Per Lifehacker:

Android Task Killers Explained: What They Do and Why You Shouldn't Use Them
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.

 

[hookbill]

Since the thread below is still active there is absolutely no reason for yet another thread on task killers.

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