Why are all these apps showing open.

[jelliott724]

So i got my droid x just a few days ago. to make a long story short i got the advanced task killer. well i notice by battery was going dead very fast so i went out and bought the extend battery from verizon store. well now that seems to die just as fast. well for some reason everytime i open up task killer to kill an app that i used it's showing like sometimes up to 4 or 5 application open that i didnt even open or use. so i kill it and about 10 or 15 mins later i will open task killer back up and its got sometimes the same apps open or sometimes diffrent ones. its all the ones you cant uninstall because they came on the phone like alarm & timer, amazon, city id, social networking, voice commands, music. so can someone help me out here and tell me why all these keeping opening up on there own when i dont even open them or how can i get them to stop?

 

[DF Smod]

Believe it or not, it is the task killer draining your battery

Android has a very efficient task managment process built into the operating system and it is having to work overtime because the task killer you have installed is causing conflict

 

[liferefugee]

I still dont know why VZ employees at the store insist on having people load those... Anyway, here is what you are seeing.

*Disclaimer* the following is written so my wife can understand it, so things are a little simplified.

some terms you will need to understand put very simply:
Thread - an open application
process - the open application that is actually doing something
CPU - brain of the device that does all the thinking

What you see in the task killer is all the threads on the phone. The phone keeps the threads around so that those applications will open very quicly for you, and remember how you left them. When they are actually doing something, the thread will start up a process. Just because you see a thread does not mean there is a process running for it.

When you close out the thread (which verizon employees tend to say will help you conserve battery) your phone has to recreate the thread the next time you run it. this means that you may not have your previous state available, and it may take a little longer to open up than it would have.

What is the harm of an open thread? Nothing as long as there is no process, and the OS will manage what threads are stored in memory very well. After all Google had the user and the speed of an app in mind when developing the OS.

My recomendation... use an app like watchdog. It allows you to see what processes are running by monitoring the CPU to see what threads have a process using it. If it finds an app that is negativly impacting your phone it will alert you and you can then close that thread from the same screen. It is free on the market with the lite version, but if you can afford it, show the developer some love and purchase the full version. It comes with a nice little widget that allows you to see right on your screen just how hard your CPU is working. If it is in double digets you either just turned your phone on or have an app that needs to be shutdown.