Task killers aren't necessary? I highly disagree.

[madsquabbles]

i look at lots of porn on multiple tabs and i have task manager. no probs here. i also include the task manager as an app to kill if ever use it- and sometimes the need has come with an app that won't close or keeps sucking data after i've quit using it.

 

[Darkseider]

Autokiller and sleepy battery are your friends. I used to use ATK and experienced horrible battery life. Removed and switch to Autokiller and Sleepy Battery and now 16 hours no problem. This is with 2 hours of Pandora, 1 hr browsing, 30-45 mins gaming and about 30 - 45 mins of phone calls. When all is said and done at the end of the day the Droid goes on the charger when at 20%.

 

[New2u]

I think alot of the problem here with people that think programs like ATK really bog down your system, is that, that people that use them, keep them running at all times. I like many others use the program, and have it kill itself as part of the process. So i'm not quite sure what some of you refer to as... bogs your system down, seeing as it's never running unless i need it. Yes it starts up automatically when you restart your phone, but so does alot of other crap. To simply say.. it bogs your system down.. don't use it, unfortunately you are wrong. Just like any other program, this program requires that you know alittle about things. I will agree that if you keep the program running for some... odd reason, that it most likely will add to the list of things that will bog your system down.

 

[toto]

droid freezes

I have just found this forum. Good resource.

I just got my Droid on Sunday. I have loaded about 6 free apps from the Market. My Droid started freezing yesterday. Three times within about 10 minutes failed to respond to my touch. The screen would just show my home page. I had to let the Droid time out and go dark, then it would respond. I called my salesperson, Derek. He asked me to check how many apps were running using my Advanced Task Killer (ATK) app. I had about 11 apps running simultaneously, though I had the impression that going back to home page would kill them. I killed everything using ATK. Now, I kill everything after each use and have not had the problem repeat..

There has to be a better way though. If I don't do anything, I get several apps running in the background anyway.

I have read that one does NOT need to kill anything sue to excellent memory management. Not so, it seems, in my case.

Any thoughts? Maybe the upgrade will cover this issue.

 

[jsh1120]

I have just found this forum. Good resource.

I just got my Droid on Sunday. I have loaded about 6 free apps from the Market. My Droid started freezing yesterday. Three times within about 10 minutes failed to respond to my touch. The screen would just show my home page. I had to let the Droid time out and go dark, then it would respond. I called my salesperson, Derek. He asked me to check how many apps were running using my Advanced Task Killer (ATK) app. I had about 11 apps running simultaneously, though I had the impression that going back to home page would kill them. I killed everything using ATK. Now, I kill everything after each use and have not had the problem repeat..

There has to be a better way though. If I don't do anything, I get several apps running in the background anyway.

I have read that one does NOT need to kill anything sue to excellent memory management. Not so, it seems, in my case.

Any thoughts? Maybe the upgrade will cover this issue.

As noted earlier in this (and many) threads, you almost certainly didn't have "11 apps running simultaneously." You had 11 apps in memory simultaneously. In a multi-tasking operating system "running" and "in memory" are not identical. An app "in memory" may be running or it may simply be sitting there ready to run if needed.

It's impossible, of course, to diagnose the problems you initially encountered. They may have come about from an app you have on your phone or (more likely) from an interaction among various applications.

From your description, it sounds as if your phone was "busy" and failing to respond to your touch much as a computer will sometimes fail to respond immediately to input. (An especially common occurrence with Msoft Vista. ) Why it was "busy" could have to do with the GPS trying to get a fix on your location, synching of your email (or other apps), and a host of other reasons. For example, I have a news reader app on my phone. It periodically updates hundreds of news stories from RSS feeds. When it does so the response to my touch slows to a crawl for a few seconds. Likewise, I run the GDE homescreen with seven screens. When I "wake up" the phone moving from one homescreen to another often lags for 30 seconds or so.

And though it doesn't happen frequently, sometimes my screen simply cannot be "awakened." In those cases I can't tell what is going on but if I wait long enough it usually rights itself. On occasion, though, (probably a dozen times in five months), I've had to pull the battery to straighten it all out. (Though if I'd waited long enough it might well have done the job for me.)

If you want a phone that doesn't experience this problem, get an iPhone. It "solves" the problem by severely limiting the amount of multi-tasking that the operating system supports. In effect, it allows only one application to run at a time.

 

[dmo580]

Task killers aren't absolutely critical, but for the people who spam DONT WORRY ABOUT MEMORY and taht link to the one forum post, you're doing nothing but trolling sometimes.

Example 1) Speedtest.net app. It uses GPS to figure out where you are. I wanted a quick speedtest at work. Obviously GPS is not gonna work well indoors. Well I can't exit the app, so while I go to my Homescreen, my GPS is still going mad. Now please don't tell me to just turn off the GPS. I only use a few apps that use geolocation via GPS and one of them is Speedtest, the other is Google Maps. Apps should be allowed to use the GPS as long as you're not letting every single app use the GPS. If I didn't task kill Speedtest.net, it would try to acquire a GPS signal forever.

In terms of memory management, the Droid does just fine. I do't mind programs being in the memory as Android seems to do a good job. Sometimes you really do need to kill a task though. It's just pointless for it to remain open w/o an exit function.

 

[jsh1120]

Task killers aren't absolutely critical, but for the people who spam DONT WORRY ABOUT MEMORY and taht link to the one forum post, you're doing nothing but trolling sometimes.

Example 1) Speedtest.net app. It uses GPS to figure out where you are. I wanted a quick speedtest at work. Obviously GPS is not gonna work well indoors. Well I can't exit the app, so while I go to my Homescreen, my GPS is still going mad. Now please don't tell me to just turn off the GPS. I only use a few apps that use geolocation via GPS and one of them is Speedtest, the other is Google Maps. Apps should be allowed to use the GPS as long as you're not letting every single app use the GPS. If I didn't task kill Speedtest.net, it would try to acquire a GPS signal forever.

In terms of memory management, the Droid does just fine. I do't mind programs being in the memory as Android seems to do a good job. Sometimes you really do need to kill a task though. It's just pointless for it to remain open w/o an exit function.

Just ran speedtest. It turned on GPS and looked for my location. Found it. Ran. When I exited it was no longer in memory and my GPS was no longer running.

Just ran speedtest located in my house where it couldn't get a GPS signal. Exited. GPS continued to run for about 10 seconds and shut off. No sign of Speedtest in memory.

Not sure what you're experiencing but my Droid uses GPS when it needs it and shuts off when it doesn't. And at least in the case of Speedtest, the app you chose as an example, it behaves appropriately.

My guess is that you are not actually ending the speedtest app by hitting the "back" button. Instead you are simply hitting the Home button. Doing so doesn't shut down the app. And it shouldn't. This is a multitasking operating system.

Edit: By the way, I don't mean to pick on you here. I suspect that many users don't understand the difference between the "back" button and the "home" button. The former is designed to "exit" an application. The latter is like that little "desktop" button on the bottom of your Windows desktop/laptop system. It doesn't necessarily exit anything; it just clears a running application from your screen.

 

[dylanthecat]

I just tried as jsh said and it worked the same way as he stated. It does not work this way with the browser though. If google is your homepage and you back out of the browser the gps stays on.

 

[jsh1120]

I just tried as jsh said and it worked the same way as he stated. It does not work this way with the browser though. If google is your homepage and you back out of the browser the gps stays on.

Not on mine. The gps goes on because of the "Near Me Now" feature on the google search page. On other browsers that feature is not enabled and the gps never activates. But even with the default browser the gps shuts off as soon as I exit.

The default browser was, however, left in memory. It's undoubtedly designed that way to improve performance when it's called again. There isn't an option to shut it down completely. On xScope, however, you can choose to exit with a long press on the back button and select "clear everything." It will then shut down the browser and remove it from memory. Unfortunately, it will also remove any login/passwords you've entered and you'll have to do it again when the browser is called again. That may or may not be the behavior you want.

 

[mrtrumpet]

I firmly believe in task killers and find that the performance of my Droid is much better when I use ATK. This is especially true when powerful apps like GPS are used. I see no downside and will continue to use it. There's no reason not to and every benefit to gain! And the lite version is FREE!

 

[jsh1120]

I firmly believe in task killers and find that the performance of my Droid is much better when I use ATK. This is especially true when powerful apps like GPS are used. I see no downside and will continue to use it. There's no reason not to and every benefit to gain! And the lite version is FREE!

Faith is a powerful motivator.

 

[MuzzleBuster]

I firmly believe in task killers and find that the performance of my Droid is much better when I use ATK. This is especially true when powerful apps like GPS are used. I see no downside and will continue to use it. There's no reason not to and every benefit to gain! And the lite version is FREE!

I have "Task Manager" and only use it when things get buggy.
Also use "Startup Auditor", which has made a big difference in performance and battery life.

Since running these two programs (properly setup) I've kept track a few times, they have increased battery life by 2.5 hours (effective evidence).

Many programs don't just sit in memory, they connect to the network.
And how is it that I can kill apps and let the phone rest only to find more apps "in memory". I'm supposed to believe they just loaded themselves into memory and sat there doing nothing while the 3G arrows are going crazy?
Yea, right.

 

[MuzzleBuster]

I firmly believe in task killers and find that the performance of my Droid is much better when I use ATK. This is especially true when powerful apps like GPS are used. I see no downside and will continue to use it. There's no reason not to and every benefit to gain! And the lite version is FREE!

Faith is a powerful motivator.

I find proof better.