Below what amount of avaliable memory slows down phone?

[Repose]

Sorry if the title confused you; I was trying to make it so it wasn't lengthy. The memory I'm talking about, while unsure of the name, is at the top of the ATK or TK (Advanced TasKiller or just TasKiller) and I'm curious as to what amount is the starting point of when the phone slows down? Or does that not pertain to phone speeds?

 

[New2u]

First off i'd love for you to read this first

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...-not-worry-about-apps-running-background.html

It explains about it, but so far i think my phone has gotten down to 40ish and i haven't really noticed anything.

 

[Repose]

So using the TasKiller program is essentially useless?

 

[JhankG]

So using the TasKiller program is essentially useless?

That's how I understand it. The Android OS is designed to run apps in the background without affecting performance.

 

[New2u]

No, for programs such as browser, and gps related apps.. it's good to kill them because you don't want gps running down your battery, but people were killing off things like calender and they were coming back. I keep things like email, facebook, calendar, and my handcent sms up and running. But other then that i kill most things i've installed as apps after getting the phone.

 

[cereal killer]

basically....yes : )

I deleted it and have not had a slow down or any problems with battery life. My uptime today is 14:28:15 and I am at 50% battery life on no charge. Thats with moderate use. Posting in here, texts, facebook, 2 hours talk time...

I use my home key to "close" apps and thats it. No more BB OCD for me : )

Them days is gone...

 

[Repose]

Oh, okay. I just read the thread about phone security and I downloaded Flexilis. Does that require to be run in the background for it to work?

Thanks for the help so far.

 

[New2u]

Oh, okay. I just read the thread about phone security and I downloaded Flexilis. Does that require to be run in the background for it to work?

Thanks for the help so far.

As reported right now security for the phone may be overkill it may not, i don't think really anything is out for the droid, as of yet, and it's alittle more secure because it runs on linux.

EDIT: sorry but yes it has to be running in the background to work.

 

[JhankG]

Oh, okay. I just read the thread about phone security and I downloaded Flexilis. Does that require to be run in the background for it to work?

Thanks for the help so far.

I read on another forum that Flexilis will kill your battery. I've never used it to don't take my word as fact. Try it out and let us know if you notice any difference in battery life.

*EDIT* - Nevermind. This turned out to be incorrect.

 

[JhankG]

Here's a good explanation that I just read on another android forum"

The honest truth about task managers on Android is that you only need them to kill misbehaving applications. The Linux scheduler that Android uses is quite good at taking care of memory use and the CPU is not used unless an application is active. Most of the folks wondering about memory usage don't understand how Linux works on that front. Linux will use every bit of available memory it can all the time and release what's not actively in use, like for a sleeping app, as needed. So unless an app has a memory leak then it's not actually tieing up an memory and unless it has sleep issues then it's not tieing up the CPU. When I started looking at things for the right perspective, read: this is linux not just another smart phone, then I realized that a task "manager" isn't necessary just something lightweight, that exits or sleeps when I push the back button, that will kill an out of control app is all that is necessary.

All that said there are plenty of apps that suck at both sleep and memory leaks and it can become necessary to kill them. So far, and based on my professional experience with Linux, Taskiller is the best app for most users as it only shows applications and doesn't let you screw up your phone by killing processes. It does one thing and does it will. If you are lazy you can set up the ignore list, on the paid version which is cheap, and then use the widget to kill everything else. What I use it for is to kill off the occasional ill coded app right before I uninstall it. With the exception of the sleep issues with the messaging app I can have everything stock running and have no performance issues even an extraordinary number of widgets.

So the answer to what you want to do is, technically, that it's not necessary. I know that's probably not the answer you want but the rest of the answer might suck even more and that is that the behavior you want is controlled by whoever wrote the app and not the OS. If you want to kill apps, which can in some cases screw up the app and cause a re-install, you'll need a task manager. I would recommend not killing apps outright but rather figuring out which apps are screwing up your performance and find a replacement for them or kill them when necessary, one at a time, using the free version of TasKiller."

 

[Lookout]

Thanks to everyone who suggested Lookout (Formerly Flexilis) for their mobile security solution.

For those that asked: Lookout should NOT have any noticible effect on battery and runs quietly in the background until needed.

If anyone has questions, comments, suggestions, feedback, etc, be sure to let us know at support.at.mylookout.dot.com

Thanks Everyone!

 

[Sleeve]

If the GPS icon is not visible in the status bar, isn't GPS off? All the GPS apps I have used so far will remove the GPS icon as soon as I hit the home button or back out of them. I've used a lot of GPS apps, never force closed a GPS app, and I have zero complaints about battery used. I don't think idle GPS-using apps keep the GPS on when they're out of focus.