Android Guide: Should I Use a Task Killer

thank you! The Alltel Rep installed an Task Killer b/c I complaining about lagging. After reading a bit on your site I immediately uninstalled. I love this site! so helpful. Much more knowledgable than the Reps.

With the Hero, and other lower end phones make sure you do a reboot at least once a week, this keeps things fresh on phones such as yours with a pretty low amount of memory.

Well said !!!
When I first

Well said !!!
When I first bought my HTC Desire I was misinformed that I would need a “Task manager/killer”… BAD Idea !!!
After the upgrade to 2.2 I made a clean re-install of my phone and started an experiment. I just installed a widget to see how Android Linux is handling memory…. after a month I can tell you It’s amazing that even if sometimes it was dropping under 90 MB after an hour, when I checked it was back over 110 MB !!!

Android incorporates some of the best pieces of code for memory and multitasking features derived from its Linux “nature”…

So my conclusion : KILL the Task Killers on sight

Thanks. I’m completely new to Android and was informed by several people that a task killer was first app to install. Lucky for me I read the comments before installing a task killer app, and one comment said how totally unnecessary task killers were and to do further research, which lead me here. Very clearly explained.

Hey!

Here’s a question. After I rooted and got a custom ROM/Theme on my desire(LeeDroid 1.9a, 2.2+sense), sometimes maybe after 3 days of use, the phone gets really slow, as in only 20 ish meg of ram avaliable. Are you saying that it is normal, to have to reboot the phone for preformance?

if there is only that much memory left after 3 days then you have a problem, it is not normal (For instance, I have never got this little memory, or even close to it). Maybe you have a really bad app that is eating and not releasing memory?

Use SystemPanel to identify an app that may be doing this, then i suggest you uninstall it right away.

thanks!

Thank you very much for this eye opener, I honestly thought a task killer would be a wise move I never thought Android was that good at memory management. I was in a habit of using a task manager after moving from a WinMo phone to Android. Anyways thank you!

i’m a noob and i have some noob’s questions if u dont mind

if i had some apps running in the background which uses data connection, gps or anything that consume battery (such as twitter, facebook, rss feed, lattitude, etc) and i wont be using my phone actively for couple hours, would killing it with task killer is a bad idea?

i do understand that killing process would do harm, but what about killing apps?
i’ve experienced lag and after i killed some running apps it ran smoother

i’m surprised to learn that free memory and memory in use, uses same amount of battery, i would like to know why and how does it work?
and if it’s true (not that i’m saying u’re wrong), then killing-start an application would use same amount of battery as leaving it running right?
in your article above you mention that it actually use more battery, because it uses more memory,
shouldn’t it using same amount of battery no matter how much memory used?

last question,
what about processor consumption? does it also uses same amount of battery?

Forgive me for bad english and my stupidity

Yeah I kinda thought that myself because after a reboot, I’ll have maybe 170 MB of free memory, then it declined to like 110 ish. Now it’s on 100, going down to 90 sometimes.

Btw Thank you so much for getting me to root It’s freaggin awesome

if your phone is inactive for a few hours, simply turn off mobile data, then the apps won’t use your battery to check notifications.

it takes more cpu power to fully reopen an app, than to pull it from memory, so that should use more battery if you constantly close and reopen.

checkout my 3 apps for root users guide, use it and like me your average will be about 200mb free

Great, thank you so much for this plain explanation ! When I got my Droid X the Verizon Rep immediately downloaded the Task Killer on my phone, saying this was necessary. After reading a similar article as yours, I uninstalled it, and my Droid X has been multitasking right along with absolutely NO problems and NO ekstra battery drain since then. That is a month ago. I really love this phone !
Thanks again !
Beate from Frederick, MD

I ve recently bought the Hero are you saying its a low end phone if so what is a better phone (BTW with Sprint)

I think it’s crazy that reps are telling people to use task killers tbh..!

compared to the top of the range now it kinda is yeah. Top end would be the latest HTC, Samsung and Motorola phones. Top androids on Sprint right now are the Samsung Epic and the HTC Evo

I’m a bit confused as the article says task killers are bad for android and then you say use SystemPanel. So should I use systempanel or no? Id like to see whats running in the background and not actually kill the app…except maybe the factory installed apps.

It was the rep at the Verizon store who installed app killer when I picked up the phone. And I don’t understand why there are always lots of programs running that I’ve never used and never will use, like Stocks, which I can’t even uninstall.

Okay all, I’m a sales rep for u.s. cell, we were told in our Android training sessions to install task killers. Starting tomorrow I’m calling my Android customers and telling them to remove this app. I had no idea that the task killers operated this way. Just the HTC and Samsung reps told us these were must have apps.

it means do not sue one to kill apps, system panel is just a tool to help you find problem apps.

thanks deleting task killer now

Quick question – I don’t have unlimited data on my phone – if I don’t use a task killer and the programmes are running away in the background (such as Twitter for Android, internet browser, Google Maps, etc), am I not paying for data that I’m not intentionally using??? Sorry if that’s a stupid question, I’m new!!! Thank you

Killing apps will not help you save data, as they will simply start up again when the OS needs them. If you are worried about unintentional data usage, you should instead check each app’s options and turn off (or at least tone down) the update frequency.

The big problem with task killers is that when your phone is locked, so is the task killer. So they are useless when you really need them.

Helpful article. I have found after 8 months of Droid ownership that task killers are useless and even counterproductive. Do you have a link to your “checkout my 3 apps for root users guide”? as I am not familiar with who you are. thanks

sorry just saw the link first time visitor thanks

Firstly, well done on the great article, I have always been against task killers, I was once convinced to try one and uninstalled it straight away as it was closing apps that were then just reopening themselves and also sometimes causing errors and jerkiness. Anyhow, You have recommended SystemPanel in those circumstances but wouldn’t the built-in Android Task Manager be just as usful? And if not is the SystemPanel Lite version capable enough for finding and killing/removing ‘dirty’ apps?

Perhaps it’s because I have an older (and therefore ‘low end’ in your terminology) Android phone, I have to say from personal experience that Task killers actually do work for me – maybe you could make it clear that this article is more applicable to phones with lots of memory to spare.

Older phone = I don’t have all that excess memory flying around for apps and unused processes to sit ‘running’ in the background as my understanding – and from your article – is that : more processes/apps running = more memory used = slower phone.

What I don’t really understand is, if you’re advocating not using a task killer – why recommend an app like ‘System panel’ which to my apparently inexperienced mind seems to also ‘detect’ memory hog apps which you can then ‘force-kill’ – similar to what a task killer does already – at least this is what the one I’m using does too.

Nice article. But in your first paragraph you sort of lose the validity. Google do give you an easy way to kill apps without any 3rd party product. Simply to go Settings/Applications/Manage Applications and you can force any app to stop running.

The only reason I kill apps is to stop annoying messages appearing when I have stopped using them and I only ever do it from within the tools provided by the Android OS. If we were not meant to kill apps, they why would there be the facility to do so within the OS itslef?

better to use startup auditor to block these from opening at run time

wow, they should really train you in how android works, than just tell you to do crap like that! But at least it helped someone!

Thanks for the clear explanation . . . task killer removed!

hi,

twitter app will only update during the timescale you set in its notification options, if you set this to manual it won’t update in the background.

The same with the browser, it will only load up a webpage if you do it yourself

thats ok

Yes, the build in one can be used, i find systempanel to be more user friendly though. And yes the lite one is fine

Thats fine, the point of the article is about using task killers for the reason they were created for. Task killers were not created, and typically not used to find system hogs, but this was the whole reason for the development of systempanel

I understand that, but that isn’t a simple way in reality really, otherwise there wouldn’t be so many task killers on the market.

The facility is there in the os because android allows 3rd party apps to be installed, without vetting them first. An app you install may loop FC, or eat up all your memory. So it’s included for this reason, to be able to cancel an app that may do this.

Google do not recommend you kill tasks normally, only in these special circumstances, remember, this comes from google first, i didn’t make it up.

no problem

This article is misleading from the very start.

Why would it be bad for hte phone to install a task killer? It is bad to auto-kill apps, but why the heck does it not mention that in the very beginning?

Aside from being poorly written, most of the assertions in this article don’t make a lot of sense. The “Task killers save battery – FALSE” argument, for instance, is missing the point: it’s not the removal of the task from memory that is saving the battery, its that stopping the task releases resources consumed by the task: CPU, radio, GPS, etc. Stopping a task *absolutely* puts less demand on the battery because that task is no longer putting demand on system resources that make use of power. Similarly, killing a background task reduces competition for resources, CPU and memory – all of which causes the remaining tasks to perform faster thereby speeding up your system.

Automatic task management happens in every operating system, including android, but it does not catch or maintain the system in every use case. External task managers and “task killers” are perfectly acceptable forms of manually managing a system,

Bizarrely, this “you shouldn’t use task killers” article ends by recommending an application that is, in fact, a task killer.

This article is just…strange.

“A process is an activity”
I don’t agree with this definition. A process executes an Activity/ Service etc. http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/concurrency/procthread.html

“When android does close apps itself to free up memory, it does this in a very clever way in that the next time a closed app is reopened, it will restore it as if it had never been closed in the first place”

- If you have lots of memory, closing processes is maybe not interesting. But in case you have a weaker device like G1 where memory is not much higher than the threshold, following might happen: you have many apps opened and start a new performance critical app. This causes that you reach the threshold and system starts killing processes in background. Instead of using full capacity for the performance critical app which is currently running, the system is busy with killing non-used apps in a more or less clever way. Now if you clear memory by yourself you might initially have enough capacity preventing the system to lower performance by these process killings while you need full performance for the app.

Thats what is meant by the title “Should you use a task killer”.. Not “should I install a task killer”…

Thanks for the feedback

It is far better to use the settings available in an application to manage its background use of things such as GPS and background data transfer. A good app will include options to manage this. Task killing is not supposed to make up for poor app implementation…
So of course, if your app does this in the background without the option to manage it, then killing it DOES save battery, that goes without saying. It also goes without saying you should look for a better app to replace it.

Hope this has cleared up your first point.

Second point, I hope I explained how android was developed, with the idea that the user should not have to worry about killing tasks, please re-read the article if you didn’t get this point.

Thirdly. I think you are mistaken about what I suggest SystemPanel should be used for. At no point do I say you should use this in the typical way a task killer is used. Instead I point out that if you have memory issues, a bad app may be causing this, and you can use SystemPanel to find and then remove this app from your phone.

Just to clarify, SystemPanel was never created to be a task killer, and my instructions in this article do not advise to use it in such a way.

Hopefully that has cleared up any problems you had understanding this article, please do let me know if you need anything explaining further, I can try to simplify it

I agree with the weaker devices, it can be useful to kill apps manually on those, especially for a power user

Yes, I have an Acer Liquid S100 and G1. While the Acer doesn’t need task killing, it is absolutely necessary for the G1.

There is another thing i noticed btw: If you do lots of debugging with Eclipse on a device, Eclipse/ adb might freeze quite quickly if you do not kill the debugged app before you restart it. Sometimes the device makes even a self-reboot. By using Task Killer I had no re-boot so far and Eclipse freezes 90% less times.

Thanks Robert, I think I’ll put a note at the top of the article regarding lower end, or at least older devices, especially those running an older firmware. Appreciate the comments

Honestly, rachid – you really don’t have to “explain” or “simplify” things to me. Trust me, I understand what you are saying – but your assertions are just incorrect. What you do have to do is to stop spreading misleading information about systems management.

Again: task management and background task removal is a completely acceptable way to manage your handheld – OSes do not know what is happening inside a given application, and often give it the “benefit of the doubt” and let it run. Also, its not just “poorly written tasks” that appropriate resources and never free them up.

BTW, you should re-read your own article. You most certainly do recommend SystemPanel for stopping what you call “poorly written applications.” In fact, the entire article, as well as some of your rebuttals to peoples comments, is littered with special cases: “Well, if you have an older device, use a task killer.” or “if the application is poorly behaved, use a task killer.”

Android is open for a reason, and its a manageable operating system in its own right – do what you like to keep your phone running smoothly.

why does this article sound like something Google wants us to believe, but kind of light on the facts? the article didn’t really explain anything. it’s more like, “this is the way it is, so just trust me.” i’m no tech expert, but it just doesn’t make sense why shutting down apps wouldn’t save some power. and the fact remains that my brand-new Droid 2 has terrible battery life, so i’m not just going to sit around and assume Google thought of everything. something is wrong — really wrong.

Well for those guys out there that are having some girl trouble… I mean Android trouble lets give this topic a rest sit there for an hour long watching this video so you guys can see how Android ITSELF turns off an app and lets off resources and even shuts the cpu while its not being used.

> it just doesn’t make sense why shutting down apps wouldn’t save some power

Because it takes a lot of power to load the app from flash into RAM and perform all the initialisation. As he said in the article.

yeah, but what if it’s one of the dozen or so apps that i don’t want to run at all, ever. that’s why this article makes no sense.

it makes even more sense in that case. Im assuming the dozen or so are things like htc apps (or similar carrier apps)? They’ll just restart themselves, leaving you with an endless cycle of killing the same apps over and over and over

Okay, that actually makes some sense. So the article could just be “Android kind of sucks because no matter how many times you close apps you’re not using, they’re going to open up again over and over and over.” In fact, I might even try uninstalling my task killer, although my battery life was horrendous before I installed it, so it’s kind of hard to imagine it’s magically going to get better without the task killer. Still, why did Google design a system that ensures you’re not even going to get a single day of use out of your phone without a mid-day recharge? What do they have to gain from putting out a bad product like this? Or is it the phone companies like Motorola that are screwing up, putting their own widgets and skins over Android? What do they have to gain?

see i dont think a task killer is too wrong. in fact im often annoyed a lot of apps run in the background. say i use an instant messenger. im just too lazy to SING out if i dont want to get messages anymore so i just kill that app.

also i am very annoyed you can NOT GET RID of google talk. so sure i can kill the task but it will always come back so im free to get spammed by people and i cant NOT be on google talk if my cell isnt shut off. AWFUL

wish there was just a CLOSE app feature so i could avoid all this.

Most of this article is incorrect, or incomplete to the point of being misleading in cases not covered here. You say to never use a task killer yet you link to one and tell people to use it. This article should be taken down.

You should try reading the article my friend, then you’ll understand just why SystemPanel was recommended. You are also wrong to refer to it as a task killer. The developer would be offended by that.

Please feel free to comment on specific sections of the article, so that I may respond appropriately. It’s hard to take your comment seriously due to what I just mentioned above (ie no substance to your view).

Hey thanks for reply again.

Android isn’t a typical handheld, people normally and incorrectly compare it to winmo for example. What I’m trying to achieve with this article is to explain the reasons behind not having to use a task killer.

It is poorly written tasks that take up resources. If google guidlines are followed then the task will not take up, and continue to take up resources. Its a general statement, but you never think to “close” the gmail app as an example.

What I recommend with regards to SystemPanel is using it to FIND which app(s) are poorly written, or using too much resources. Then you may remove those from your system. At no point to I ever suggest that you remove a task killer, and use SystemPanel to do the same job. How you can even suggest such a thing and still claim to have read the article is beyond me..

You may do as you please on your phone, you paid for it after all. I am not forcing anyone to do anything. I think this is what you may have misunderstood. This article was to try and help people new to the platform, or those non-techie types to understand their phone better.

Google do not recommend task killers/closing apps, but it is OUR decision. We should at least have some knowledge before making it. Too often, a task killer is forced upon new android owners, and that is wrong.

Please reply, you do raise some interesting points.

Haha, ok lazy may be a good reason to use one!

Google talk is ingrained into the os. For instance you’d have trouble downloading anything from the market without it. But you know you can sign out of it? Menu > sign out.

Thank you, Rachid. As new as I am to this, your article made sense to me.

I have had my Droid X for a month but have had little time to read forums and “play” with the phone because of some extensive travel commitments. In the few hours I did have, I saw that the ATK was a “must” and I installed it.

Yesterday was Day 30 of ownership, and I wanted to kill someone or something because of low battery life. I went to my Verizon store. The rep said, “Oh, you probably need an ATK.” I said, “Funny you should say that. All I know is that as soon as I kill any tasks, they restart anyway” He thought I was nuts, but I showed him. His solution was to install another version of ATK on the phone. I was going to point out that it didn’t seem to be effective either, but it was like talking to the wall. He and his co-worker insisted that crappy battery performance was a Droid way of life, and I just shook my head and left (I do like the phone, even if I’m angry).

Anyway, I’ve managed to snag an extended battery this a.m., and the NEXT thing I’ve done is kill my two (can you believe that?) ATKs. I can always reinstall ONE of them if I think my phone is the better, but somehow, I think I’m going to be pretty darn happy without an ATK.

Again, thanks.

Sorry, I have to disagree wityh you. I can’t even get the CAMERA to quit running. We went out a few weeks ago to take pics of the baby. We hired a pro, but I took a few snaps with my phone as well. I exited the camera and went on my way for about 20 minutes. When I next looked at my phone,m I had about 25% battery. I had only had the phone off the charger for an hour and a half or so at that point. When I looked at battery usage, I found that the camera was still running, and in 20 minutes it had eaten 85% of my battery life. This isn’t a “poorly coded app”, this is the default core camera app that came on the Android. I’ve seen similar behavior with games that require high processor an battery usage.

I also don’t like ‘City ID’, ‘Facebook’, ‘VZ Navigator’, etc to be on my phone in the first place, let alone continually trying to launch themselves and run in the background.

Press back to leave the camera, not the home button, it should then close.

my galaxy S has a a task manager on it. It is samsungs own and i did not intstal it.Its description says “Some applications may run in the background and it results in unwanted battery consumtion” it says you should close them to improve battery usage.

It is the phone companies like Motorola and HTC and the carriers like Verizon and T-mo who are responsible for a lot of the problems actually – they modify the core Android OS to insert their own brands. It gives them more control over the user and gets them more money and theoretically fosters brand loyalty by shoving their logos in your face everywhere you look.

And they do it because they can, because Google made Android open and don’t have strict guidelines for carriers use of the OS like Apple do. It has its benefits, but it also clearly has some downsides too :/

Your best bet to get rid of apps you don’t like is to root your phone. Then you can use adb terminal to remove them, or even a GUI like Android Commander if you don’t feel comfortable with the command line.

Thanks. I think I understand what you’re saying, but the problem is that I’m not a techie, so when I see or hear “rooting”, I really have no clue what that means. I’m going to guess 99% of people don’t know what that means. I’m sure the phone companies want to keep it that way. Unfortunately what I do want is to be able to go a single day without worrying that my phone battery is almost dead.

Thanx a lot!

My questions are: 1_ Why don’t you advise to root AND get an optimised ROM?
2_ Why don’t advise to get rid of unused/tried apps?

Or did i miss any comment on the subjects?
Thanks again!

Yeah I know, my gf has a galaxy s too. She doesn’t need to use it, never does use it, and her phone runs perfectly.

Hi,

Well I would of course recommend your first point. But this guide was written in a way that everyone who owns an android phone could understand, including those people who are not as technical as others. I didn’t want to confuse them by introducing rooting here. But as I said, I would recommend it to everyone.

Your second point, well I suppose I could have mentioned that, but its kinda common sense to remove things you never use! (I hope :p)

OK, so what’s the difference? According to your original article, leaving the app (no matter how) will stop it using resources. So what is the camera app doing in the background to eat battery? Surely nothing crucial to its operation. Perhaps it IS a ‘badly designed app’.

I have had this issue with other apps (Google sky maps) which behave differently depending on how you ‘exit’ (via back or home).

OK, I am removing my Task Manager. Hope my battery life improves. It has been WAY short since I updated to 2.2

Hi, I have a couple of questions.
First, the memory reported in System Panel. How come it’s so high for every application (around 10-20MB). Say, I have an application with size 20Kb, storing around 80Kb of data. Why would it use 12MB of data when it’s loaded.

Second, what can I do about applications which are started by system automatically, when I don’t want them (and they are in active state, so I think they are not going to be released from the memory when system needs more memory). For instance, Mail program (I use K-9 mail, and it’s useless that the Mail program is running to), Cyberon Voice Commander and RSS Reader.

And btw. if I have a widget displayinh status of the battery which has used 40 CPUminitues in 5 days, I guess there is something wrong with the widget (it’s a small drain on battery itself), and I should look for some better widget, right?

Great blog very well done, i havent yet bought this phone but I will be soon… and will not be installing a task killer.
but everyone is sayin oh the battery life is bad then others are saying its great
im a typical phone user leaving it on all day turning it off at night, texting but not every day, occasionally taking photos and web browsing checking twitter, facebook, emails now and then, so how many days would the battery last then based on my usage?
If anyone is a similar user and has a htc android wildfire would you be able to reply and let me know thanx.

The first piece of truth that you’ve written on this article so far.

btw, Task Killers DO save battery life. Tested on two side-by-side Samsung Galaxy S. The one with Advanced Task Killer installed lasted 5 hours longer. And yes, I did run a good dozen STOCK apps on both phones before putting them into screen-off sleep. This shouldn’t matter of course because “Storing a footprint of an application in memory uses exactly the same amount of battery.” Wait, actually it does! And open applications use more than just memory… but to you can prove the memory part yourself.
1. Open your computer case
2. Open a bunch of applications on your computer while it is running.
3. Put your computer in sleep mode
4. Leave and come back in a few hours
5. Feel the RAM cartridges that are inserted in the motherboard.

They will be warm, maybe even hot. Where is that heat coming from?! …Oh yea! Electricity, aka battery power!

True that, the Samsung Galaxy S (Epic 4g) is the best phone out right now (at least available in the USA) period.

How do people not keep up on this stuff?

Hey Ive had an HTC Wildfire for about a month. Amazing phone for the price, despite the low screen resolution, (you mainly notice it when web browsing). I use my phone quite a bit eg. sending 50ish texts a day, facebook, music, games etc. but I can make it last a day and a half or so, leaving it on at night. It may last longer for you though depending on how much you use it. I started using a task killer several weeks ago (Task Killer). despite what Rachid has said (and he does have some very good points), I find that the battery lasts longer with a task killer, that is depending on how you use it. I have a feeling this is because it frees up the CPU, meaning its chewing up less power. It seems to speed up the phone a little aswell (apart from when youre opening the apps again of course). It would depend on the type of apps you use though as to whether a task killer is good or not. But for an example, before I had a task killer, I would charge my phone at night so when I went to bed it was fully charged and in the morning it had used up around 20% of the battery. Then once I had installed Task Manager I killed everything again just after it was fully charged before I went to bed and in the morning my battery was still showing up with full bars.

I am a newbie when it comes to smartphones. I bought the Droid X last week. The first thing the Verizon rep did was install a task killer app. My phone blanked out two times the day I bought it and the following morning my phone completely froze up! I took it to the Verizon store and she said that the rep installed the incorrect task killer for my phone. So, she installed a different version. I don’t use my phone extensively and I have noticed that I am lucky to get a day out of my battery. I had thought that the task killer was supposed to help with that. When it was first installed I was instructed to occasionally throughout the day bring up the task killer app and kill any “open” apps listed. Now I assumed that the rep knew what she was talking about, so I took her advice and did what she recommended. So, anyway, two days ago my phone froze up again! I took it back to Verizon and she wanted to do a hard reset. I wouldn’t let her. I wanted to do a little research first. She told me that I would have to start all over setting up my phone. It took me three days to finally get it to where I like it (being that I really don’t know what the heck I’m doing) and I don’t even remember exactly what I did to get it to that point, so the thought of me having to go through that again was too much Anyway, I just had a gut feeling that the task killer was a big if not the entire part of my problem. Well, last night I uninstalled it and we will see how my phone does now. I am hoping that the phone is not defective and that it was the app that was causing all my grief. It will also be interesting to see how my battery does. Thank you for the well written article regarding task killers. I am not tech savvy and it explained things in a way that I could understand and I appreciate that! Also, I don’t understand why people think that you are recommending System Panel for killing apps. Even I understood that it is merely a tool to identify which apps may be causing problems on your phone so that you may uninstall them. Thanks again. I will write an update in a week or so to let you know if uninstalling the task killer helped.

I own a Droid Eris and before I rooted I had a task killer and I tried with and with out one. First of all with out the task killer my phone crawled. I mean slow animations turned off and every optimization possible. It always seemed it ran out of ram and then had to spend more time finding more ram to use. I once read some where which I don’t remember and wish I could at least give credit to the person. Said that task killers are kinda necessary because when android reaches a certain amount of free ram it takes up cpu cycles to free ram for new apps. I don’t know if he is right or not but in my experience that seems to be true. You only have a finite amount of ram and if you left the os manage that then its wasting cpu cycles to do that and slowing things down. Killing process freeing ram and such makes sense to me. I want to understand y they are bad but I just can’t see how you can tell me 30mb of free ram is a good thing.

Ok Can I throw something into the mix here. I have to use a task killer on my Galaxy S even from new without any apps downloaded. As the memory leak is aweful on the standard build from Vodaphone to the point where the phone lags so much that you actually think apps are not opening. Since using a task killer its surprising how many apps I havent started manage to load themselves and run in the background.

The issue is the unit running very low on system allocated memory anything lower than 50Mb effectively stops the device from behaving correctly.

since running average memory available is 140+Mb and no problems at all. So what the battery may drain but most of the time its sat on my desk plugged into the charger. Turn the brightness down.

Lets not forget Linux is not that smart and not be fooled in believing hype regarding what is thought the OS will do.

These are fairly low end pieces of technology compared to PC’s. Android is just a cut down version of linux giving us what windows mobile didn’t.

I love my phone just dont like the sloooooow down without using a task killer.

just got my phone and have no idea but I think I am glad I found this site ty

Rachid, for once I may have agreed with you coz I don’t have any knowledge of process/application/activities.
But I CANNOT. Reason being simple.
Before Task Killer : X10 Battery Run Time: NEVER more than 7 Hrs.
After Task Killer : X10 Battery Run Time: Almost 24 Hrs.
No article can convince me to uninstall task killer. and I do not care my apps are poorly written or not. I love using them, and will continue using them( till I find a better alternative, which again may be a “poorly written” app.)

I’m siding with Rachid here. It is not easy, nor is it simple, to close down a task, or multiple tasks, through the stock OS method. I do use a task killer, but I use it to close programs that are only on my phone as a convenience in the case I would ever need them. I never use Slacker, but I have it on there in case I have a need for it, so I close its background process every time I reboot my phone. Programs I ever use, even only once a day, I do NOT close, and I let Android handle them in memory. I use task killers very sparingly, and for very pointed uses, like the example above. Most noobs to Android kill everything not knowing any better, and this is wasteful and inadvisable. This is a pro article, and it asks users to make a distinction between well-coded and poorly-coded apps, gives them a way to determine this, and then directs them to be smarter on what they install and how they manage it. Good article, stupid responses.

You should know what you’re doing.. back typically is an exit function, and home is typically a multi-task function. If you’re hitting back, you are backing out of, or “exiting”, the application. If you hit home, you are literally doing nothing other than displaying the home screen. You said yourself you had this issue before with different functionality between hitting home and back, so why didn’t you learn from last time? It seems as if you are trying to justify repeatedly making the same error and blaming the phone for having a “home” and a “back” button, which DO NOT DO THE SAME THING, or else they wouldn’t be two buttons. Think about what you’re trying to do, and appreciate the nuance of what Android allows you to do.

I was curious so I tried what has been suggested in the article and this is my experience. I installed the lite version, charged my phone fully (overnight, light was green and was no longer taking a charge) and used it through out the day. It was dead by 2:30pm and had came off the charger at 7am. Over that course of time I took two calls totalling less than 5 minutes combined and sent 4 and received 4 texts, no pics, no games and did not check email. Today being the third day since I came across this article I tried again but used ATK as I normally would. The battery has fared much better today I must say. It came off the charger at 7am and has been used for: 5 calls totalling 18 minutes, 11 texts sent and 9 received, checked email at noon and 4:30pm, took 3 pics. As of 9:30pm it still has just under half a battery left. But here’s what I find to be most interesting, System Panel Lite is what consumes the most power on my phone. While all else is quite there it is running away. Any where from a third of the way up the scale to two thirds while every other app is bottomed out. Perhaps I should remove it.

And I’d like to remove some of the things I never use. Unfortunately they are not allowed to be removed and are always opening and running anyway. (sigh)

The phone already comes with a task manager. Hold the HOME key down for a couple of seconds, the Task Manager come up, click on it and you are now able to END any active applications. Wouldnt this be the same as a task killer?

Pretty informative…

The situation is not as simple as the above arguments may lead someone to believe.

As far as CPU power consumption is concerned, keep in mind the CPU is always running, even if idle. In an idle state it just executes a loop, waiting for the next event to happen. The power to the CPU is not turned off unless the machine is in a SLEEP mode. The ideal system is a CPU that is entirely interrupt driven, switching completely off when not in need, but I do not know of such a CPU. It needs to be clocked and driven with power in order to monitor interrupts coming from the keyboard, screen, network interface, timers, software etc. An application that does not require CPU attention does therefore NOT necessarily consume extra power. The first misconception therefore is that more software in memory uses more CPU power.

One needs to distinguish between memory space usage and memory access. In an oversimplified way one may say that the former does not require additional battery power, while the latter does. Memory space usage cannot affect power consumption since whatever the information written into memory does not mean the machine is actually accessing that information. If a task is inactive (maybe because the front end of a Notepad application has been minimised or closed down) there may be a significant amount of code and data stored in memory, but if the NotePad does not actively access that information, then it lies essentially dormant. Therefore the number of apps in memory CANNOT affect battery power by itself, since the information in memory does not use battery power by itself. Memory chips require a fixed amount of electricity to hold information, even if the information is junk. The amount of electricity needed scales directly with the total amount of memory in the system. If your Android system has 8 Gbytes of RAM, then the memory uses the same amount of electricity, whether the 8Gb is full of junk or filled with software. This is especially true for dynamic memory which is the typical fast-access memory used in computers and hand-held devices. The second misconception therefore is that more software in memory uses more electricity.

Having said that, there are three exceptions to these two basic statements:

1) When memory is being accessed. Reading information from memory requires additional electricity because of the additional circuitry that needs to be activated to do this. If a background application accesses memory all the time, then it actually consumes electricity, even though it is running in the backgound. However, an app should NOT access memory if it has been relegated to the background because it is not required any more. Memory chips heat because of CPU accesses to that RAM, not because the RAM stores information.

2) Background processes can monitor external devices such as the Internet link. For instance, if GMail is constantly checking for incoming email, then it accesses the Internet hardware, writes some of the results to memory, and continues to perform duties even while GMail is only running in the background. This uses up electricity.

3) Some software, e.g. a Bluetooth interface, uses physical hardware that is “normally” not switched on. The user needs to switch it on or off, therefore the onscreen tools provided by Android to do exactly that. Software in the background that used WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS (e.g. geotagging of photographs) therefore can use a considerable amount of electricity if this ancillary hardware is used and the results written to memory. Background apps that use these hardware therefore use electricity.

The above I hope shows that background tasks can (and do) often use additional electricity, even if they are only running in the background, supposedly in an “inactive” state. In order to conserve battery power, kill all software that makes use of the LAN/Internet interface, the GPS facility and any hardware that is not needed at a particular moment. Software that writes to memory (or to disk) on a regular basis should also be killed if their services are not required.

Given the superlative design behind the Unix/Linux OS in terms of efficient multitasking and the handling of of background processes, we might expect that the management of power may be close to optimised. However, if one runs a geotagging process as part of a camera that is running in the background, then we cannot blame the OS for consuming more battery power because of GPS accesses. The user did not kill the camera software and the OS thinks the user still needs the geotagging facilities.

To sum up, it is good to know which applications use battery power. Android provides excellent monitoring facilities to see which apps are the culprits. I would use software such as ATK to see that these pieces of software are killed when not required, afterwards killing ATK itself as well. I hope this offers some extra perspectives and a compromise position between the above two extreme positions.

I know its a very old article, but I didnt have andriod phone that time …I have one question.
I got new Captivate two weeks ago and I didnt had any knowledge of Android before that. So as every noob does, I also got worried about my aweful battery and installed task killer. But I noticed that my phone started to lag. So after reading many articles and comments, I came to conclusion that I don’t really need Task killer and Android is designed to stop all unwanted Apps itself (as u have said in this article).

So I thought to test something. I opened camera and then clicked back (not home key but back). The running apps in settings showed its not running, but in System Panel (as suggested by you) it shows Camera is still open but inactive.

So my question is, do these inactive but open apps consume bettery or affect performance?

alot of people are complaining about apps coming back after killing them…this is a scheduling issue, set tasks not to run automatically or update intermitently otherwise even task killer wont solve battery issues as teh tasks will restart almost immediatley..yes android closes tasks as and when necessary …but if you dont plan on using an app for a while, task manager makes sense and will increase battery life…but the amount its utilized is dictated by task scheduling.

Does Inactive but open consume battery? No. FACT. Your RAM is powered whether you are using its storage or not.

It does cost power to write to it, though. You want to Kill a task?
CPU:Hey RAM, make Bit 1 a 0.
RAM:Okay making Bit 1 a 0.
Okay, now make Bit 2 a 0.
…..
etc

You can think of RAM like a whole ton of magnets. Once they’re charged, they’re charged. If Android needs space, and nobody cares about that group of magnets, it will steal them.

THAT BEING SAID: How you know whether a program is “inactive” really depends on the monitor you are using. I am not entirely familiar with how AndroidOS works, but looking at what you’ve presented, it may have not included it as it was not using any electricity what so ever even though System Panel shows it since it looks at your RAM.

There are some sneaky programs, though, that still consume power even when inactive, but as stated in the article, these are poorly written programs probably by an ameteur.

You can think of your phone as like a factory, and Task Killers is like hiring someone just to shut off lights as people leave the room. What little costs that you save by shutting lights off is offset by you having to pay another person.

System Panel is like hiring someone to check the electricity meters in every room for 10 seconds, then going home. If you see that one room was pulling a crazy amount of electricity, you might want to go down there and see what’s going on.

I am not speaking to the capabilities of AndroidOS/System Panel/etc to detect these issues as I am a Physicist/EE and power consumption is on my end of things more than it is in the software.

It is possible that System Panel is exactly the kind of program that the writer suggested that you use System Panel to get rid of. However, that doesn’t invalidate his description of how the OS works.

It is possible that using your task killer is actually killing a runaway process that is causing your phone to die so quickly. With a Task Killer, you have no idea which task it is-just that one of them is doing it.

Rachid simply suggests that you use a program that monitors CPU useage, and not RAM useage as one requires electricity, the other doesn’t. The whole “IDLE RAM USEAGE IS BAD” concept has been extinct for years, but non-experts have a hard time accepting any changes to their schools of thought.

“But you said Diet Coke was healthier.”
“Yeah, well, now we know it gives you cancer. Our bad.”

You can think of it like a professor writing 1 line on the board, and erasing it before writing the next line. If someone has a question about line 8, he needs to write it again. It takes more energy than having him just use up the whole chalkboard, and erase as needed at that point.

In theory, it is possible to have an application that uses your hard drive for the storage of data, and wipes the references from the RAM, but reading/writing to a Hard Drive is insanely slower than to RAM. So Applications store all of their information in RAM, as opposed to internally to the actual Hard Drive… thus, a small program on your Hard Drive can consume infinite amount of RAM.

I’m not sure what you mean by the “storing around 80kb of data” unless you mean that there’s 80kb of system files, in which case it’s the exact same answer as above.

People need to get that a program being stored in the RAM and running are two COMPLETELY different things. Rachid, you should really include a huge disclaimer at the beginning stating that as people are getting incredibly confused.

This thread contains a lot of people who know very little about Programming, Electrical Engineering/Computer Architecture, and Physics. I am a professional “D, All of the Above” though to a lesser extent Programming. Professional as in “I am slacking off all 4 of those things to write this post.” …It’s friday.

But I say this not to be arrogant, but to say that I can tell you for a fact that storing information in RAM does not consume power. HOWEVER, Microsoft Windows does a lot of writing to the RAM even when ‘sleeping,’ thus confusing the self-proclaimed, self-taught “furu” as I all them.

There is far more going on inside of a computer than you realize, and Rachid accurately explained that the things that consume power are CPU useage, and RAM read/writes. Having a program that only monitors RAM useage is like reading the “Calories” contained in an object and equating that directly to “Healthy” but then again, people do that too.

Anecdotal evidence does not obsolete the laws of physics, even if it may appear contrary. You are liklely killing these runaway apps that are mentioned in the article… but that’s beause you’re nuking an ant hill. However, finding out what those apps are and uninstalling/closing ONLY those apps would provide the same (or greater) benefit.

Samsung Galaxy S has a major lag problem that is inherent in the phone build and 2.1 of the operating system. This has something to do with the choice of file system: I don’t entirely understand, but there is a great deal of information about it if you look. People get it functioning without lag by rooting and using a fix.

Version 2.2 of the operating system for the Galaxy has been very messily rolling out around the world (or, not yet but hopefully soon). You need to use Kies to check and install that. Again, the web will tell you what status the update has in your neck of the woods.

Hopefully it fixes the lag problems: but if not, again look into the lagfix.

You CAN get an app on the market called startup auditor. It does not require root, and it allows you to determine whether apps restart from boot or while running.

The guy is just an Indian doing advertising work for System Panel.

Me? Firstly I’m not indian. There is no Indian/Asian in my heritage. Not that it should matter where I’m from.And secondly, you obviously have not read this article. The article is nothing to do with system panel at all. Its about task killers, its about how android works.

Thirdly I have nothing to do with System Panel. You can use another app to do the same thing. I think the System Panel dev is actually America, again not sure what the Indian thing is all about.

Please read the article again before making comments that make you sound simple.

“Google did not want to burden the mobile user with having to close applications when they are “done” with them.”
Sounds like the same reason that Microsoft used to implement multitasking in WinMo.

“As mentioned, there are some situations where you may need to use a task killer, and this is when you have downloaded a poorly coded application that is causing your phone to be unstable, or hogging resources (commonly known as a memory leak). ”

Here is the problem with the above-most Android applications in the market are of very low quality because they are not well designed. that is a problem that will persist until developing houses start taking a lot of these do-it-yourself coders on the market. Also, until those spoiled Android users who want everything free start paying for the already low prices of mobile apps.

Really nice article. Can u pls tell me how can i play divx videos in my android phone. i have htc wildfire. also please suggest some nice applications and games. i have an ipod touch too, i dont find the same kind of collection in android market as it is in itune stores.

This article is fairly misleading… The correct use of task killers does in fact save battery power in 99% of situations. Your task killer should be setup to ignore core system apps needed by the phone to keep the radio alive as well as any app that will reload into memory on their own. In theory what the author claims about storing apps in memory using no extra power is correct, but the fact is most of those apps you leave storing in memory are not just sitting there, they are checking orientation of the phone, checking for updates, activating the radio, etc. Also, you are forcing android to have to continuously make room in memory for the apps you actually want to use, so you have this vicious cycle of android clearing and reloading memory all the time which keeps the processor awake.

On another note, when you phone is idling, the cpu frequency is reduced to a very low clock, usually 66Hz. This drastically saves battery power, the cpu frequency is directly proportional to the voltage phase lock loops, You use exponential less battery power when you phone is idling. Any apps left in memory that are actively doing something all will force you phone to not idle. You should uninstall or use a task killer on any apps that will not allow your phone to idle when you are not using it. This by itself will easily double your battery life.

If they are sitting in memory checking for updates etc, then it is because
that is the job of the app. Good apps let you turn off this. Bad apps do it
without asking you.

You do not force android to make room in memory, it was BUILT to do this
exact thing. It WANTS to do it. Force implies making it do something against
its will. When actually, we are letting it do what it was born to do (don’t
believe me? Ask google).

Regarding your last paragraph, apps that are doing something and not letting
your phone idle are doing so for a reason, for example checking your
facebook updates. If they are doing so without your permission, uninstall
it, as its obvious the developer has little knowledge of android.

btw, you should also clarify what you mean by not letting your phone idle,
there are many different states an app can be in, and very few apps keep
your phone from becoming idle, if they do it is usually IMMEDIATELY clear
which is doing so (remember the recent facebook app update?)

Funny thing is that I’ve left my phone without a task killer for a few days and the phone would never clean itself up unless I turned it off. Even even then it would run slow after a couple minutes. Hooray for retarded critics who have no idea what they’re talking about

coming from somebody that knows nothing about anything (myself), rachid’s article suggests using task manager to identify which apps to completely remove. A task killer you stop the task, if you use it again you stop it again, use it, stop it, and so on. Rachid, i think, is suggesting not to use that app again, but find a similar app written with android’s multitasking in mind. Although you said you understand what he was saying, and you may, what you wrote doesn’t show me you understood AT ALL. If I’m wrong I apologize to you both. But I agree with you many attest to task killers extending battery life and rachid has no answer for that.

Very detailed and thorough explanation. I was about to install a task killer on my Samsung Intercept. After reading your very imformative article here, I don’t think I’ll be using a task/app killer anytime soon. Thanks!

I agree with Michael K here. Home is just a multitasking option. For example:- Dial a contact and hit the home Key, the call is not disconnected!

Haha. Well after reading all the comments today (and the whole article two weeks ago), I used SystemPanel and it made my whole Droid freeze.
So.. I agree with the Author.. DEFINITELY do not use Task Killers and especially not SystemPanel!!! )

p.s. I had just started A*Famous*Game(NameChanged) and then switched to Home->SystemPanel(shortcut) to see how much memory AFG consumes… when the screen or SystemPanel froze and the Droid restarted itself 5 min later:)

i as a new user of android 2.2 on a samsung galaxy gt i9000 and suffers the lagging issue, trying to see if i kill any of the running apps will it help?! reading here I don’t get a too clear message, I for instance when I check with th ebuild in app manager I have now out of 304MB available RAM – I have 200MB USED – so only 100 MB Free (?) is it a lot ? is it enough ? Will appreciate a simple explaination.
Thanks
Hanani

The lagging issue is due to the way samsung implemented the internal sdcard.
It is nothing to do with free memory.

Have a look at this article on how to fix your lag :p http://goo.gl/TnOBJ

Rachid – You are epic =D This is the app I looked for

And a very great article, I will pass on the word! ^^

Cya around! Peace

Thanks

You’re an Idoit

Great article and very useful. Thanks for the system panel recommendation, I have been using android since G1 was released, now I have an EVO, which is an excellent device by the way. I used to (about a year and half ago) download apps one by one and monitor how my phone ran after installation, if it slowed down I would uninstall and try something else, with system panel you don’t have to do this which is great. I have read the comments on this article and it seems many people either haven’t read your article, or just don’t understand, some seem to be brainwashed by what some unintelligent sales rep tells them at a verizon or sprint store.
My last phone was a MT3G slide, which is an excellent device as well by the way. I was running 2.1.1 and never used a task killer and had no problem with battery life. I did turn the brightness of my screen down a notch from its default setting. I don’t talk on my phone a lot, but I do a lot of browsing and use many apps,. Many people complain about battery life but forget that in their phone specs that battery life is rated at about 6 hours talk time, the average android probably has about 5-6.5 hours talk time on the battery. If you get on the phone, like my wife for instance, and have a 2.5 hour conversation, then you just used half of your battery life, you can’t expect to make through the whole day after doing this at say 10am without charging your phone. Keep in mind that the more you talk the more battery you will use. So if you do have these types of long phone conversations keep your charger handy, you will need it.
Another thing people tend to forget is that since many different manufacturers make devices that use android you have to chose your brand carefully. I have had Samsung devices and had problems with lagging to, ie the behold II and the Transform, both imho are garbage phones. If you don’t have much memory left, you either have to many apps for your phones internal memory, or you have a device that older and are needing an upgrade, or you just decided to buy a very low end android device that just isn’t capable of doing what you are trying to get it to do, if this is the case sure you saved money on the phone but don’t you wish you hadn’t been so cheap now? If you phone lags a lot it could be the model, its not androids fault you chose to buy an inferior device that isn’t capable of handling the os efficiently.
With froyo on my evo I decided to download a task killer just to see if it did help because I have never used one before, and I noticed after killing the apps I selected to kill, I checked back 5 minutes later and they were running again, how could anyone with the ability to think logically believe that this helps your battery life, obviously constantly starting and stopping apps is going to use more battery life than leaving it running in the background. In short this article is correct, don’t use a task killer, it doesn’t help your battery life, if you have a memory issue, either use less apps or get a device that is capable of doing what you are trying to do.

Ha! Some of the people on here are unbelievable. Cheers Rachid – I found the article great… and I installed Systempanel, so enjoy your commission, lol

psh, I WISH I got commission for it!

There is a lite version which does everything that you’d need it to do….

Thanks – thats really helpful. I’d read that a task killer was a useful way to conserve battery, but you’ve persuaded me otherwise!

A state of 0 inside RAM is represented by a value less than lets say 1.5V.
A 1 clearly uses more power than a 0. As a value of 3.5V+ would represent a 1.

As an EE you should know how RAM works, and that its not 100% efficient as capacitors do not infintely store charge. So losses would occur. So it would need to be refreshed, which it is. So would clearly use Power.

Ram is absolutely nothing like a whole ton of magnets, you sound like you are talking to a bunch of 5 year olds. Please explain to people that DRAM and SRAM are volatile, if the power goes, so too does the information. However if you are talking about MRAM, which no smartphones have and a miniscule amount of specifically designed computers have then yes, RAM is like a whole bunch of magnets.

If you are using less RAM you are 100% using less power.

If anybody wants to know how RAM works just google it, you will soon realise what’s going on.

I loved your article just got my htc desire hd last Thursday n I saw a task killer, I installed n saw my battery life go down… but now the application is gone… prob for good lol =) thank you =)

thanks very much for this info im a old get that have had a wildfire for 2 months and im learning all the time thanks again chadders

Your article was fine up to this:

So in the above situation I recommend you get yourself an application called SystemPanel.

This is incorrect. You can force close apps by going into Settings > Applications > Manage Applications and exiting the problematic ones. These kinds of apps reinforce the ideology of having a task killer, which is completely against the spirit of this article.

Well written otherwise, though!

I do agree with Keshav..there seems some app programming error ..hope we get rid off this in next above 2.2 version ..

Rubbish. Its Unix. Killing processes won’t do any harm unless they’re system processes, and anyway the signal is probably such that the process can handle it and gracefully exit. Just a way to push a spurious app.

I’ll remove the app… I have nothing to do with that app, woah people would
read the content instead of jumping to conclusions.

Never said that killing apps will cause harm to your phone. The key to take
from this article is that you don’t need to do it, and that by doing it you
are more likely to encounter problems.

I’m a bit puzzled by comments here that people have apps running that they don’t want. My running apps list just has apps I use. If “stocks” is running, then it’s probably set to auto sync. So, don’t use a task killer, just turn off the auto sync… or is that too complicated?

RAM does use power, but a phone will always power all the RAM whether it contains an application or just junk. If the phone could selectively power down unused RAM then it may be useful to free it up, but it can’t, so it isn’t!

Perhaps you should take a course in reading and comprehension, you and Uberrob. Everything he’s saying makes perfect sense and not misleading at all. If you read the reviews of the Task Killing apps, most people have problems with them and most people say that it slows down their phone or drains their battery. That is why I came to this forum to find an answer, before I went and downloaded something that had so many bad reviews. I’m glad I did and I’m going to go with the advice of Rachid and a few others.

I dunno if my comments even belong here considering i no NOTHING about androidbeing a symbian / blackberry user et all. But my HTC wildfire is like 2 days old and it was fine (battery wise) till i installed advance tast killer last night. My batter was 45% and when i woke up (7 hours sleep) my phone was switched off. The previous night it was 36% and when i woke up it was fine! WTH!
So am i to uninstall it because a lt of used also complained about the battery widget (market) saying that it sucked up their battery rather than made it better. I also installed that last night. HELP!
Much appreciated.

Hmm… I don’t think any task killer safely closes your apps. Notice that in the Manage Apps to close an app, it’s called “Force Close”. I don’t think anything with the word Force means anything good, or something that should be used often, so why would you force close apps anyways? I mean, I leave my GPS on all the time, and I open Maps, so then my GPS starts kicking in and the symbol shows. When I leave maps, my GPS symbol leaves. Apparently Maps isn’t doing anything since the symbol left, so why do I need to “Kill” the task? If I do need memory, won’t the OS just close the app itself? If you press the home button, you see your 8 most recent apps. If I don’t use Maps for a while, it closes, and when I go back to it, it has to open up. If I leave my phone on over night, after fully charging it, I usually have between 98-100% battery left after 8 hours of doing nothing, and Maps used 98% of all my battery. But I wasn’t using Maps, so that means Maps wasn’t really taking anything at all, so there was no point in killing the task.

I had a friend who would literally open his Browser to search something and then use a task killer to close it only to open the browser again like 10 minutes later. He’s having battery issues with his Evo. Hmm…

Keep this in mind task killers. If you don’t let the OS close the task and not force close it with a task killer:
You’re using an app with the screen on obviously (screen brightness makes a heck of a lot when thinking about battery)
If the phone vibrates during the app, that’s more battery
You’re finished with the app, so you use the task killer app to close the app. (oh? Using an app? Battery usage)
The task killer is still running in the background (so what are you going to do? Open the task killer again so you can force close your task killer?)

Ok…

Why don’t some of you start thinking about other factors like your screen settings and sound settings if you really want to save battery life. If you have your screen in bright sun light with auto-brightness, your brightness will turn up, and if you’re using an app for an hour, of course you will notice high battery drain. But it’s not because of the app, its because of the screen brightness.

Depends on the type of RAM. And you might consider reading some factual information about it. Yes, dynamic RAM must be periodically refreshed, but it takes less power than older static RAM that required a constant flow of electricity to maintain its value. And no, a 1 clearly DOES NOT use more power than a 0.

Think of a bit as a switch. It takes energy to change it from on to off or vice versa. Once it’s been flipped, it takes no more energy. With conventional RAM, the switch has to be refreshed periodically, which takes a little energy, but not as much as “holding” the switch in place. In the context of this article, that means whether RAM is used or unused, it takes the same amount of power to maintain its state.

Therefore: regardless of whether or not the RAM contains some program’s data, there is effectively NO change in the power required to maintain it.

This is a better description and less vague than the original article. Through the comments here, it’s evident that using task killers to auto-close apps that restart themselves is bad for battery life. Battery life is not related to the amount of memory in use, but by the amount of processing that is being performed…as well as the peripheral devices like GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc. that are active.

There are times when using a task killer to shut down malfunctioning applications (even stock ones) is a necessary practice to restore the device’s normal operation. As a developer myself, I know there is no such thing as a perfect program.

Saying task killers are unnecessary when you use only “well written programs” is like saying cars don’t need seat belts if you’re a safe driver and never get into an accident. Stuff happens.

Task killers are needed when things go wrong – that is, occasionally. But they shouldn’t be mindlessly used because a device manufacturer or novice developer decides their app “just has to run constantly”. Apps should have the ability to be disabled when unneeded. Likewise, runaway apps deserve to be killed; after establishing a pattern of abuse, they should be uninstalled (if possible).

I’ll never get rid of my task killer. It’s a necessary tool.

that’s just a load of crap. I use task killer, it does make my battery last way longer. I don’t care what your “techie” advise is.

Probably because you have an app that is eating at your battery. The article
advises you find out which, uninstall and use a better alternative. Then you
don’t have to worry about killing anything.

You can still do if you like, it’s your phone. The article is there to
educate people who have been told a task killer is a necessary item…. It
is not.

Hi.. How about startup manager? with this kind apps we can reduce apps that automaticly start at boot process, and reduce startup time.

Agreed, I think thats quite useful for increasing startup time, especially
on older phones

Turns Blue Tooth off all the time. VERY frustrating when you have Cellphone Preperation in your car. Uninstalled it last week, and no more problems with car kit connections.:0)

u racist fag where did india come from

thanks for clearing up the issue of why we shouldn’t be using a task killer

What about if an app is using 3g to update in the background and you have a weak signal. Will it use more battery resources? Financial?

Hello Rachid!

Nice article! It was very usefull for me and my understanding of the Android OS. Don’t bother trying to understand people who’s only purpose in life is offending other human beings. We are all here in earth as equals.

You really need to re-read the article and perhaps the comments aswell.He suggests system panel to IDENTIFY apps which are draining resources, then to remove and download a more efficient, better written app, and NOT to use system panel as a task killer.

listening to you. you make sense. unistalled ATK; what else can i use systempanel for? (other than checking to see whats using up my memory?

Ashok

That’d pretty much it, as much as I’ve used it for anyway. I don’t even gave
it installed anymore, if I ever see issues then stick it in to check,
otherwise not much need for it imo

The main battery drains I have found are (in no particular order) :
1. Screen brightness – turn off the automatic brightness adjustment, then put the brightness at halfway. If you need it brighter, just turn it up a notch when you need it.
2. Accounts and Sync – turn off the automatic sync and background data. Just turn it on when you want to browse the market, then switch hit off again afterwards. This was a MAJOR battery sucker I found.
3. Make sure all your data connection types are only on when you need them (GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc.)
4. If the phone is going to be in a low/no network coverage area for a while, switch off the 3g signal, just have it on 2g. Low network coverage really sucks the life out the battery as the phone constantly hunts for the highest spec signal, boosting radio power.
5. Monitoring and/or live update apps/widgets. Things like battery monitor, mem usage monitor, CPU monitor, weather updates etc. Constantly sucks your juice.
6. Setting the default screen switch off to a minute or less, or make it an automatic reaction to switch the screen off (put phone in standby mode, I.e. press the off switch) when you put the phone down.
7. Get rid of auto app killers, or at least the auto app kill function. Any thing that constantly polls the system will sap juice.

Once I had worked this lot out, my battery life went from a socket hunting recharge junkie every 2-4 hrs or so (when lucky) to daily recharges, every two day if light use. Now even during heavy use my battery averages at around 6hrs. And before any one says its because my battery was new, I only started to figure this lot out after a couple months of thinking, “they weren’t kidding about the awful battery life” and I had an N96 prior to my current desire (and an N95 before that).

Oh, great article BTW, could have expanded a little more though, and maybe put in a slightly better way, but made sense.

Thanks Rashid for an intelligent article.

My observations, having read the various comments, is that many users have not learned to use their phones, nor to use Android; they do not understand the difference between the phone hardware features, the operating system and the applications. Then, in their ignorance, they criticize your advice, sometimes rudely. Your responses are invariably polite and I admire your patience.

My advice to new visitors to this article is to follow Rashid’s suggestions; they make more sense, and are better put, than those which disagree.

As a recent Android purchaser, and systems engineer, this article has proved very informative, and useful = Thankyou

Hey, thanks a lot! Now I understand a little more about android.

Maybe on your fancy Desires and Galaxy S a task killer is unnecessary, but on my low-end not-extremely-smartphone Galaxy 3 it is impossible to live without one. When all games and apps are running in the background, it takes about 10 seconds to access my contacts and make a phonecall. When I kill them it only takes two. This is to me a daily experience and no amount of arguing can convince me of the opposite.

I am not as tech savvy as some of the commenters, but I will tell you that I have been using my Sprint Hero for almost a year now and have learned a few things. I installed a task killer when I first got the phone- I read an article singing its praises. I checked it several times a day and killed apps like crazy. My battery was lucky to make it half way through the day. I rooted my phone and installed a custom ROM and felt a little more daring. I decided to not reinstall the task killer and just play it by ear. I now can go the whole day without a low battery warning; this is with several calls, checking email, playing games and texting frequently. I definitely think the task killer was draining my battery. My best friend has the same phone-rooted and running custom ROM- and insists on using a task killer. He carries an extra battery with him and has to charge both every night. Sometimes, less is more . I appreciate this article. It wasn’t too difficult to follow and I think it explains things well.

Thank you for your comment Appreciate the kind words

thanks a lot for this. My taskkiller is a thing of the past

And calling him a fag makes you a bigot.

Problem is that Android – like most other “auto” garbage collection systems – has to be triggered into collecting resources. The trigger is usually low system resources. So what happens is the famous “go out for a coffee break” cleanup effort whereby the phone is very unresponsive while the OS does housekeeping. If you look at most apps you install they are installed with a run at boot set. I might not *want* the damned thing to run until I tell it to but the developer decided that for me with no options to control behavior. Sorry – but I use a task killer that can drop ‘em when the phone boots and kill ‘em when I exit the app. I don’t need to it hang out on the odd hope I’ll get back to it sooner rather than later. As a result my phone is always snappy and runs new apps with no lag. I also get better battery life because quite frankly there are days when Twitter is the last thing on my list and even a hourly checkup is too often. Just kill ‘em and no regrets.

I am new at android and using a HTC desire since last week and as Rachid mentioned 1 of my friend recommend me a task killer to keep my phone faster,save memory n battery life but after reading this article n some comments i Uninstalled The Task killer..Let’s see what happens

Sorry, but this is just a huge load of corpolitical lies. My HTC Desire runs a shitload of apps ALL FOR NOTHING in the background. It starts them and keeps starting them and I can only get rid of the internal crappy HTC apps and services after rooting the damn thing. As long as I have not rooted the thing, killing the apps will do, thank you very much! They use up memory and processing power, like on EVERY computarized system. Idiot.

I found that GoogleMaps and GPS are the biggest ones, by far. Not one other app or functioning hardware partr even comes close.

What are you bullshitting on about man? It *is* simple: You just stop the service and then stop the app, as written before, via Settings > Applications.

The big issue is that the phone’s OS keeps starting these apps and services without giving the user an option to NOT keep starting them. There really needs to be an “Autoruns” type of config tool, so you can control the crap the system keeps starting.

i have experia x10 big, in a nutshell i use taskkiller and now my battery lasts twice as long and not one problem with phone , end of story ,

I object to any notions that WM is inferior to android. Since switching to android earlier this year (tried the evo for a week, now have the epic 4g), I would still switch back to WM in a heartbeat if there was a good phone running the OS on the market anymore (I think there’s the HD2, but I have sprint..). At it’s core, WM may have been less touch friendly, slower, and less stable, however, this things were aggressively addressed by developers, and frankly, I think they’re debatable. My epic runs better than my old touch pro, but it’s also got double the hardware specs, so it’s not entirely comparable. However, WM was definitely far ahead of the pack as far as functionality goes (aside from being the last of the major 3 mobile OSes to get a market), and android is just beginning to catch up to functionalities of WM (note that I am referring to windows mobile, and not windows 7 phone OS, which I have no experience with, but from a glance it looks like they tried to copy apple by simply expanding their mp3 player OS into a phone OS).

In summary, I think windows mobile 6.1/6.5 was comparable to other OSes in most respects, and had the advantage of being extremely customizable and always being the first to get new features functionalities. So all you haters can shut it.

I believe using the back button during a call will not disconnect either, only the end button will… but i’d have to double check that. However, I do notice a problem with web browsers. If you’re browsing around, and then want to close the browser, the back button has to be held down or pressed a million times to properly close the app…. which is annoying. The other option is to hit home and use a task killer. I use samsung’s task manager, which only lists active applications, and, if I’m not mistaken, only removes them from the foreground.

What task killer do you use?

There’s great content in this post, but it’s been a bit diluted by your quite extreme opinion and sweeping statements I think!

The ‘exceptions’ for me in using a task killer are, unfortunately fairly frequent (probably every week)
and I’d say it’s most often with Google Maps.

I think all smartphones have bugs and task killers can sometimes help.
With Google Maps I sometimes can’t achieve GPS lock, or it loses its internet connection (possibly to do with me having mobile internet toggles) and using advanced task killer has saved me several times with this really efficiently.

What phone do you have? Haven’t had any of those issues on the 6 android
phones ive had!

No opinion in this post either, its direct from google :p

I read about half way down and i got a headache.Your original article was great,put in lamen terms. Im a 41 yr. old concrete. in the past 16 months i taught my self how use a pc. I have had a droid 1,droid incredible,and now evo shift i rooted them all by reading experimenting im obsessed with android phones.every part of my phone is tweaked. I have tried about 600 to 650 apps I stop counting at 584.I keep a notebook of every thing i done till i rooted my shift. system panel i use the most. you can archive your apps uninstall apps you don’t use much so they dont run in background, (service) plus you can install an older update of an app if new update has does not work properly.it also tell you what apps total cpu usage is. totat time/average comsumption/memory usage(restident,shared,effective) and more.I use to use task killer, as I read more about android os i stopped big difference especially if you use alot widgets and have all app installed at least in my experience. That enough from me i still consider my self nubie. im not much of a writer bear with spelling/ punctuation ect. hey rachid what do you think (fast reboot app)

I used a taskmanager and thought it will help to solve performance problemes but as u said after killing apps my hero was unstabile every time. Now i know why. Much thx. Ur article is clearly and understandable. I will memorize ur adress and if i got any big problem it woudt be nice if u can help again

I would like to check with Rachid when any new app installed, it is installed into RAM or ROM?

Very useful Information.
Thank-you very much.

Having read the article I tried two experiments. Firstly, I compared the list of running apps shown by ATK to the list in Settings / Applications / Running Services. ATK showed dozens of apps running while the Running Services List was a less than half a dozen. Secondly, I uninstalled ATK and noticed no discernable drop in battery life or performance, probably a modest increase although I haven’t tried to measure it.

My conclusion – ditch the task killer.At best it’s unnecessary,

Running 2.2 on an htc Legend. I’m a relative newcomer to Android so happy for a roasting …

Thanks, for such avaluable advice. I was about to install a task killer.

With the absence of a close button or exit/shut down option, I am curious to know will the Task Killer be good for those that are trying to limit or not exceed their data usage??

It depends.. The app should really let you specify when/how often/if it
updates in the background.

Most of them do, so again imo it’s a case of simply using a better app if
the current one doesn’t

Umh so here’s my problem. My phone has little memory (170MB of ram) so if I don’t manually kill background apps (pre-installed apps which I rarely use but mustn’t uninstall, Skype,…) Android itself will kill LauncherPro because apparently LauncherPro has a higher oom value than those apps I guess? If LP is constantly removed and loaded to ram like that it will consume a greater deal of battery than if I set auto-kill every hour (system apps and frequently used apps are excluded) to make sure there’s enough free memory to prevent the system from killing LP.

To sum up, if I use task killer, according to this article it’s technically bad for my phone but it actually DOES SAVE battery for me. If I don’t, it drains my battery but it makes my phone more stable? Either of them cuts both ways.

So, do you have any solution to my case?

God… you are damn right! I’m uninstalling Taskiller right now, and downloading SystemPanel. Thank you very very much, greetings from Spain!

Hi Rachid …..thanks for your very informative article, im not a technically minded person but found your article pretty simple to understand and it made a lot of sence. am expecting delivery of my first Android phone tomorrow (HTC DESIRE HD) ..and will not be installing Task Killer. regards 

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I had been scratching my head for months and months. Even considering going back to Apple but I simply uninstalled my task killer and *sob* my troubles are finally over in a matter of seconds. I cannot believe it… Thank you!

Sound ideas, dont like the preachy tone tho!

Hah, it was unintentional! Just trying to inform
On Jun 17, 2011 12:58 AM, “Disqus”

I don’t mind an app that I’ve been using staying open for me to come back to. I usually exempt the apps I use regularly from my ATK setup.

What really pisses me off about the Droid setup (Verizon, HTC Incredible, Droid 2.2) is when the Droid *starts* an app’s process to run in the background without me ever interacting with the app in the first place. You know, like City_ID turning on every time you make a phone call. Or the Huffington Post app turning on every time I check my Facebook app.

I don’t want processes I didn’t start running on my phone. 95% of my use of Advanced Task Killer is done expressly to shut down the crap that’s running that I’m not trying to use. Until the phone companies stop loading unremovable crap that automatically activates, until the app devs offer settings to turn off all ‘automatic start’ features permanently… ATK will remain the very first app I recommend to my non-techy friends. Thanks.

to the commenters with an invalid argument:
changing state of a data node uses power, that is the truth.  now, all technical arguments aside, the current used when you rip your phone out of that sweaty pocket to power up your screen when you pull up your task killer every five minutes drains the battery significantly more than just chillin. pass out at a party with an almost dead phone, wake up.  your phone has just enough juice to read that text… but you used your screen and drained the last bit of battery juice.

Rachid,  I’m curious.  What do you think of apps that claim to extend battery life.  Like Juice Defender, for instance.  How do they work?  What do they do that makes battery life longer?

That app works by turning things off so as to reduce cpu usage. For instance
it will turn off sync and data connection, then turn it back on for a couple
of minutes every x minutes so your apps can sync.

It just means you won’t get instant notifications. For me the battery life
saved is negligible so I don’t use things like that :p

@uberrob
I think you’ve missed the underlying point here. Granted Rachid’s arguments are a bit sweeping and absolute and probably shouldn’t be. He’s just saying not to equate killing apps with conserving battery power, etc. but rather use them rarely and judiciously.

Even you’re statement is misleading, “a task *absolutely* puts less demand on the battery”. That all depends on the task in question; it may or may not.

Just my two cents. Thanks to Rachid for a reasonable article that points out some Android basics.

Thanks for taking the time to write this article,Rachid. I have uninstalled ATK and I’m using System Panel Lite to monitor my apps more carefully. I find the interface on the latter app much easier to understand and it’s also visually more pleasing.Thanks again.

I have been having rebooting issues for the past few days on my EVO 4g. When running an app (none in particular), clicking the home screen would make my phone automatically reboot; giving me the white HTC screen, then the loading box. So frustrating! I uninstalled a couple of apps thinking that was the culprit. Nope. Uninstalled ATK and my phone hasn’t rebooted since. I have even reinstalled the apps I thought was the problem. Even my bf who likes playing some of my games, noticed my phone running much smoother and faster. Never really understood my phones processes, just thought the apps that I seen running when not in use was not good. Researched several support forums with fellows evo users having the same probs with suggestions of factory resets or replacement. Was going to attempt until I found this thread. Thanks a bunch!!!!

Not long ago some idiot told me I didn’t need a task killer.  I wondered then what idiot planted that idiotic thought in his head.  Now I know. *sigh*

LOL

[...] Tip: Quick Highlight Tip: Quick Highlight Wondered where to post this.. Anyways, double tap and drag to quickly highlight text in any textbox How to quickly select text with android – YouTube __________________ Follow Me: Le3ky@Twitter and Rachid@Google+ Droid-Den.com: Android News/Reviews/Guides Why You Shouldn't Use a Task Killer: IMPORTANT! [...]

Thank you so much for making this so easy to understand, I have struggled with this issue since I got my phone.  You have really cleared it up for me now.  I book marked your page so whenever I have another question I will know who to come to 

Ok this all sounds like it makes sense, but what about these OS core processes that constantly run on my Motorola Electrify and drain my battery? What can I do to kill these????????????!!! HELPP!!!! PLEASE!!!

Thanks Rachid. I’m new to the world of the droid and it’s good to see some simple, informative stuff out there. 

I was taken in by the fact that many websites and reviews have their “Top Ten Droid Apps”, and some form of app/ task killer is always on the list. What you say about this type of software makes perfect sense to me so I’m going to try not using one. In fact, I am in a “diagnostic” phase with my HTC Sensation, as every 6 days since I’ve had it (since the end of Oct), it freezes on the lock screen and I have to take the battery out and do a factory reset. This seems to be the only way I can get back into it. My provider has changed the handset once and it still did it, so now (on their advice) I am using it with no SD card and with no apps, to see if it happens again. From what you described, it could be that one of my auto task killers (I’ve tried the Android Assistant one and the ES Task Killer, both set to auto-kill except for the ignore list) may have been interfering with an important process, which caused my lock screen to freeze up. Obviously it could be something totally different, but from what you say here, it could well be that exact issue. 

Thanks again, and it’s a shame that people had to sully your post by slating it so hard. I guess some people just don’t enjoy being nice and appreciating effort! 

really, last time i checked my phone, around 10 apps are running in the background which i have used a couple of hours before. try installing tap tap revenge 4, use it then exit it. check the background maybe after 4 hours, you’ll see what i mean

Great article! I also like how you address feedback so positively. I won’t be installing my killer after I reformat my phone. One question: what do you think of apps like Autostarts, which block applications starting up in the background in response to certain cues (ie memory card inserted -> run media scanner)? I use it to block stuff like google maps starting up for no good reason in an effort to save battery on my Galaxy S. 

Many people think it’s very important to use a task killer to save battery and improve performance! Thanks Rachid.This is a very helpful article.

No problem Jose, thanks for your comment!

Thanks Alex, I do try my best to remain positive

I like the autostarts app myself actually. The main reason I use it is to stop apps doing something when a certain event happens when I feel there is no need for them to do so. I think it points to lazy coding sometimes, especially like you mention when apps feel they have the right to start when you switch your phone on without allowing you to configure this.