Warning about taskiller

[jmed99]

Guys, I noticed I stopped getting facebook, twitter, and hotmail notifications yesterday. Also, I noticed my weather apps were not updating like they were supposed to.

Today I stopped taskiller from running and I started getting facebook, twitter, hotmail notifications and my weather apps started updating perfectly.

Not sure if I was doing something worng but apparently when you have taskiller running and you end all programs using taskiller it stops things from updating or at least that's what happened to me.

I stopped taskiller from running and everything worked. Problem solved. :icon_ banana: Also according to this thread an task killing app isn't needed.

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

No need to thank me for this....

 

[thundercats]

Some apps you will need to define in the kill-exclusion lists in order to not kill their synchronization.

 

[tnvzwagent]

With all of the threads about task killer and it's negative effects on the Droid, I decided to uninstall. So far so good. My phone seems to be more responsive (maybe it's just me) and my Facebook Widget is FINALLY updating.

 

[Luxferro]

Most problems are due to user error. If you don't want something to stop working, you need to exclude it so it doesn't get killed. That applies dependencies of apps too.

 

[HarleyDad09]

When you say your Facebook widget is working what do you mean? The only thing i get from Facebook is Direct Messages and friends requests. Are you guys getting wall posts, posts after yours, pic messages, ETC?

thanks...

So far, that is my only complaint about the Droid.

 

[tnvzwagent]

Before uninstalling the task manager app, my FB widget would not update at all. It was showing the status (and only status) of my friends, and hadn't updated once since Friday. Now, it updates every 30 minutes consistently

 

[HarleyDad09]

so you still dont get any notifications in the notifications pane?

 

[thajabrows]

I wish my biggest challenge was "getting my facebook updates". I use task killer to keep apps and tasks from eating up my battery so a charge will last the entire day. Of course I use my phone primarily for work as opposed to facebook updates.

 

[tnvzwagent]

I don't get updates for FB in the notification panel, and quite frankly I don't want to. I'd assume scroll over a couple of homepages to get my FB updates from the widget.
Also, I do use my phone for not only fun, but business as well. Part of the use for business is to demo this device to potential customers. It's my belief that the task manager was causing some unwanted freezing of apps. I am led to this conclusion because since I removed it, my Droid has yet to stall and require a battery pull. Also, battery life for me is no different with or without this task manager installed, either way it sucks.
I'll just let the phone do it's job of managing all open apps without assistance from myself or the task mgr.

 

[dannydoes]

To task kill or not to task kill....

Seems to be a lot of opinions here. To the "don't task kill" peeps, how do you solve this problem without taskkiller...

I loaded google maps to help someone on the road find an address earlier today. Since the program didn't shut down by hitting back or home, it ended up draining half my battery in 2 or 3 hours stand by. So what do you do in that situation if you don't have task killer?

I should mention this is the most poorly executed design of having multiple apps open on any operating system I've ever seen.

 

[Dan_Droid]

I doubt it's the apps that were draining power. More than likely you had GPS, Wifi, or something else on in the background which was using up your juice. Most apps are doing nothing when they are in the background. Unix (which Android is built on) is very good at managing memory and processes. It's not like a Windows operating system where the application is constantly using resources as long as it is loaded. So the short answer is: You don't need to be constantly closing apps, because the operating system takes care of it for you.

 

[HarleyDad09]

isnt google maps already loaded??

 

[superglen99]

I turned off taskiller today, bad idea. I wa playing a nintendo rom (punch ou!) and it was super slow. I opened task killer and and/killed everything and the rom worked great. I'm keeping taskiller on

 

[dannydoes]

isnt google maps already loaded??

If you mean loaded, you mean an app that is already installed on the phone, yes. But it's not running until you start it up, just like a photoshop on your computer.

Yes I had the GPS on. I always have it on. It doesn't drain the battery unless a program uses it. The real problem isn't that GPS was on, it was that I couldn't kill the program without task killer. Just like a PC, you should be able to hit X and exit from a program.

Im going to do a test, on a full charge, I'm going to see how much the battery goes in 8 hours without using anything on the phone and just leaving it on standby. Then I'm going to do the same thing after loading every program. Yes I will leave GPS off for this test, but I bet it won't make a difference.

 

[Dan_Droid]

The way I understand it, the GPS and Wifi are always using power unless they are explicitly turned off in the phone settings.

You can see which apps and services are using the most power since the phone was last turned on by going to Menu -> Settings -> About Phone -> Battery Use.

On my phone, the top 2 are usually Display and Wifi. The display is almost always responsible for 50%-70% of my battery use, and wifi is generally about 10%. Your mileage will vary based on how you use your phone, but the display is by far the biggest battery drain for me. I'll bet that if you are using the navigation app a lot (like you said you were), your primary battery killers will be the Display and GPS. On my phone the individual apps I use are generally responsible for less than 10% of battery usage.