Develop Bugs

Task killer/battery life

Ok, so there are task killer threads that lead me to believe that they a are a waste of time by and large, and that android automatically sorts things out. Those same posts also point out that task killers are an extra drain on the battery having to start applications over again uses more battery than leaving something dormant in the background. These posts are not the thoughts of one person but unanimous to those threads. All very well, but then there are the battery saving threads that say to close down all applications that aren't being used to save additional battery??? Again this is the view of everyone in those particular threads, so is there any chance of getting the two camps to FIGHT! And then I can decide which I shall choose to do!
For info I currently have task killer and use it all the time and get a full days use out of my battery which is good because I cane the hell out of it! But If I could improve it that would be good. I have however this afternoon decided to not use task killer for a few days and see how I get on. But an explanation would be good from both sides.

I never use a task killer and get 2 or 3 days use out of of my Desire. No point in a war just use your Desire for a week without a task killer and then a week with. I am pretty sure you will just find the task killer slows things down and doesn't improve battery life. You will not find any of the ROM chefs using a task killer either!

HI
I was reading one of those posts this morning and decided to uninstall task-killer.I have to say that after half day of heavy use my device started to be so laggy it took contacts or calendar 5 seconds to open!then I checked running processes and pretty much everything I was playing with was still running.memory dropped to 10MB and device became unusable.cannot say battery use has improved.I think it was the same.
But my task-killer is back up and running.
I must say that I am new to Android.I was using WM for long time.I can cook my own ROMs so I am not a noob but I know very little about Android.so if anyone knows what could be the reason of this huge slowdown I will be grateful for explanation.
And one more thing that needs to be said...
My device is rooted and I am using a2sd too.

polystirenman said:
HI
I was reading one of those posts this morning and decided to uninstall task-killer.I have to say that after half day of heavy use my device started to be so laggy it took contacts or calendar 5 seconds to open!then I checked running processes and pretty much everything I was playing with was still running.memory dropped to 10MB and device became unusable.cannot say battery use has improved.I think it was the same.
But my task-killer is back up and running.
I must say that I am new to Android.I was using WM for long time.I can cook my own ROMs so I am not a noob but I know very little about Android.so if anyone knows what could be the reason of this huge slowdown I will be grateful for explanation.
And one more thing that needs to be said...
My device is rooted and I am using a2sd too.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You may like to read this:
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/

dhiral.v said:
You may like to read this:
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well.i did read that before.that is why i do not understand why my phone was so slow.they are claiming that android should close apps by itself to reclaim memory.but in my case that wasn't true.everything was running and nothing was getting closed by system.

Here's another good read:
Google and Cyanogen comments imply task killer/manager apps are pointless
Both Dianne Hackborn and Cyanogen say Task Killers are useless, even developers of these apps concur. You should listen to them, I guess they understand juuust a little bit more than we do what Android is about.

pascanu said:
Here's another good read:
Google and Cyanogen comments imply task killer/manager apps are pointless
Both Dianne Hackborn and Cyanogen say Task Killers are useless, even developers of these apps concur. You should listen to them, I guess they understand juuust a little bit more than we do what Android is about.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i would like to believe it.i was so excited when i saw a post saying that i should get rid of task-killer.but as i wrote before after half day of heavy use(my phone is new so i play with it a lot :-D ) without task killer my phone was soooooo slow i couldn't use it anymore.today i had task-killer back on the phone and all day no slowdown what so ever.i don't understand that.i am starting to think it is related to A2SD and memory being relocated to SD card.

I also agree that taskkiller (the way it works for WM) is not good for android, because android has a better memory management...
but there is another flavour of taskkiller in the market... which are based on this:
How to configure Android's *internal* taskkiller
Unfortunately, your phone needs to be rooted before you can use that method.

If you worry about memory remember that the worst kind of memory is...free memory ! Because it's not being used. Obviously ram gets reclaimed and freed when it's needed.
As said in a couple more redundant threads, there might be a rogue app which you are better off closing because it stays in the background wrongly eating cpu cycles, but this is very very rare. Otherwise I think it's just the usual placebo effect...

andycted said:
If you worry about memory remember that the worst kind of memory is...free memory ! Because it's not being used. Obviously ram gets reclaimed and freed when it's needed.
As said in a couple more redundant threads, there might be a rogue app which you are better off closing because it stays in the background wrongly eating cpu cycles, but this is very very rare. Otherwise I think it's just the usual placebo effect...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have you read the link in my previous post?

ANOTHER thread about this... There must be plenty of threads on this now, but I'll just once more give my impression.
Personally I have had HTC widgets like NEWS or MAIL or CALENDER hang or crash on me and I could not restart them unless I restarted the phone. In this case an app killer was ESSENTIAL. I don't believe you need to leave the app killer running always and kill every single task when your done, but its essential to have one installed so if a widget hangs (as has happened quite a few times on the Desire) you can kill the hung app without having to try a 5 hour shut down(another desire issue) and battery removal.
Also... after 2 days use of many apps and camera use and internet and youtube app etc, your internal RAM will be about 50mb available to programs. yes, android is supposed to kill stuff as it needs, and Im sure it does, but 50mb free memory compared to 150mb the lag is VERY obvious. So I do tend to kill tasks like camera and youtube etc if I have not used them in a day and my phone seem slaggy. the phone definetly runs faster then. Thats just a fact. So the internal android task killer is not as efficent as you'd like to think. Android 2.2 runs 450% faster than 2.1 so maybe then no lag will EVER be noticable. I'll still keep a task killer installed though in case widgets crash or hang.

I found my battery most efficient with this setup:
- Installed Advanced Task killer (free)
- Security level: High (it doesn't show system apps)
- I have put all frequently using apps on ignore list: ATK, Messages, BatteryTimeLite, Internet, Weather, Clock, Calendar (so Android manage with those apps)
- Auto kill Level: Safe
- Auto kill Frequency: 2 hours
With that setup battery lasts almost half time longer than without TK or with killing all apps when screen goes off. Also I don't have any force closes / lag.

Never experienced lag at 100 or 20 mb free.

mcgon1979 said:
but 50mb free memory compared to 150mb the lag is VERY obvious.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The amount of free memory doesn't necessarily have anything to do with lag.
As Android does not use virtual memory (unless you've hacked in swapper, which is a bad idea anyway), it will attempt to make best use of available memory which may mean keeping recently used items in memory, and thus "consuming" free memory. However, if those items are not actively processing, they should not be consuming CPU cycles and therefore consuming little to no power.
As far as a running system is concerned, having lots of free memory just means that it is being underutilized.
I don't kill tasks and my phone never lags - that's just a fact too!
Regards,
Dave

boge said:
I also agree that taskkiller (the way it works for WM) is not good for android, because android has a better memory management...
but there is another flavour of taskkiller in the market... which are based on this:
How to configure Android's *internal* taskkiller
Unfortunately, your phone needs to be rooted before you can use that method.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Using this method it is possible to make the native task killer a bit more aggresive. I did some experiments with this on the HTC Hero and it just might have improved speed slightly but at the expense of stability.
"Normal" task killers are completely pointless but if people want to use them why not? It they want to sacrifice both battery life and performance by using one surely that is their choice. Whatever the experts says will not convince them.
I suppose you could use one to kill the very occasional hung app. i.e. Once every few days, but most people seem to use them constantly and totally indiscriminately.

1. About Cpu: get a task manager with cpu monitoring and verify for yourself, frozen applications in background don't do anything.
2. About memory: If an application needs 10 MB it just uses 10 MB and couldn't care less if there are 11, 100, 1000 MB free. The only moment you COULD see a tiny slowdown is the instant it needs 20 and there are only 10 available, but the system is quite good in managing that, and freeing resources (there are six levels of memory cleaning which progressively remove unused applications from the background)
3. If you stop monitoring memory usage, stop worrying about the system, you'll find out it manages itself perfectly and you enjoy the phone a lot more.

Interesting article about installed apps and a battery.
http://blog.gsmarena.com/android-handsets-batteries-should-last-for-more-than-a-day-google-says/
"...Page accused the installed apps of causing the problems and claimed that software running in the background exhausts the battery quickly...."

Interesting article about installed apps and a battery.
http://blog.gsmarena.com/android-handsets-batteries-should-last-for-more-than-a-day-google-says/
"...Page accused the installed apps of causing the problems and claimed that software running in the background exhausts the battery quickly...."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
as said in the post above, get a cpu monitoring task manager and see for yourself if you have something wrong. Personally I don't have any.
Also watch battery history which tells you if the phone doesn't manage to go properly to sleep (partial wake)
regarding that article, iphone users get way less battery time and they don't even have multitasking...
-------------------------------------
Ipad's dont have "Spell Check" thery have "Replace" built into Safarii adn it wokrs just fineq!!!

I personally installed auto memory manager, an app that configures android's internal task killer. Its not a task manager by itself, uses android's task manager. You can set the limits in MB for all the app categories android has.
I was using it in my hero as well and found it really useful. Before having it installed, after some time my free memory was ~50mb, thus my phone was sometimes lagging. Now its always above 100mb and no lag at all

[Q] Why no ones talk about the lag cause by Insufficient memory

I notice the phone start lagging when there are less than 100Meg of available RAM on both 2.1 or 2.2 SGS.
Questions....
1. How do i make sure there will always be min 130 available when not in use?
I'm currently using Froyo Task Manager, ATK and SystemPanel together to make that happen manually. A better suggestion or use of them will be appreciated.
I also tried MemoryPlus and Taskkiller (The red android logo)
2. There are so many background service running some of them start with com.samsung.... (what are these?) do we need them?
3. Why some Apps always run without us telling them to run, or ask us to give them to permission to run on background at will?

ATK
In ATK in settings you have auto kill level, which is disabled on default.

jakaka said:
In ATK in settings you have auto kill level, which is disabled on default.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm using JPC, ATK autokill will not able to kill at a system level like SystemPanel, so after a day of active use, the memory will still continue to reduce as some of the background service start consuming more and more memory or run more background process. E.g. Touchwiz from 17 Meg to 25 Meg.
So at the start with ATK, i will have 130Meg, after a day of active use i left with 80Meg. With Apps killed.

I use autokiller set to aggressive. memory left 152mb

ivanchin99 said:
I use autokiller set to aggressive. memory left 152mb
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool, does that remain for few days? How often do you restart your phone?

free memory is bad memory!
why don't let android do it's job?! this ist linux with a clever memory management, not windows 95!!! deinstall all auto task killer android is handling the memory very well. it uses all it can get and if it's not enough it kills old uses apps from it. why have free memory, there is absolutely no reson for that! ram is fast, let the often used apps be there not on slow sd or nand!

Mykron said:
free memory is bad memory!
why don't let android do it's job?! this ist linux with a clever memory management, not windows 95!!! deinstall all auto task killer android is handling the memory very well. it uses all it can get and if it's not enough it kills old uses apps from it. why have free memory, there is absolutely no reson for that! ram is fast, let the often used apps be there not on slow sd or nand!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
QFT!
What is the point of having memory if it is constantly empty?
Think about it this way...If you had five friends at your house and you have five chairs, do you make 2 or 3 of your friends stand so there is always empty space or do you let everyone sit down and worry about something worthwhile?

Finguz said:
QFT!
What is the point of having memory if it is constantly empty?
Think about it this way...If you had five friends at your house and you have five chairs, do you make 2 or 3 of your friends stand so there is always empty space or do you let everyone sit down and worry about something worthwhile?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
True, upto a certain point... I don't think you need to have at least 100 or 150 mb free but it DOES seem to help to not let it get down to like 30mb...

For me:
-JM7
-animations off
-voodoo lag fix
-minfree manager set to preset agressive.
minfree manager customizes the android memory management system.
I love it this way, No lags when starting the Phone (DIALER) or anything else. The dialer annoys me the must, this must be lag free, if i want to dial i want to dial right away.

Btw, I think you have made some wrong assumptions about the Android memory management system, as mentioned, unused ram is wasted ram.

dagrim1 said:
True, upto a certain point... I don't think you need to have at least 100 or 150 mb free but it DOES seem to help to not let it get down to like 30mb...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Agreed but I have never seen my Galaxy with free memory that low and I don't use a task killer. Of course I don't often have more than 3 or 4 apps running at the same time

This is not about letting ram do nothing.you surely don't wasn't your ram get used up by programs you don't want while you had no hand in this.All those services running I don't want.badly written programs that are hanging out in memory instead of closing.at least in symbian an app closed when you exited.

Why would you have 100MB free ? Do you have any application that needs 100MB to run ?! The android system already has enough memory to run so even if you could have 200MB of free memory you phone wouldn't run any faster you would just be able to lauch around 20 apps at the same time.
Read this:
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
Linux however isn’t generally affected by this. While I admit that I don’t know the architecture and reason for this… linux will run the same regardless of if you have 20mb free memory or 200mb.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Finguz said:
Agreed but I have never seen my Galaxy with free memory that low and I don't use a task killer. Of course I don't often have more than 3 or 4 apps running at the same time
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dunno, I just noticed that one time my phone was VERY sluggish and memory free was around 20mb or so. Cleaning it up did seem to help (unless one of the programs killed was causing the lag of course).
Ah well... Whatever people choose right?

You guys can argue all you want that free RAM is a waste of RAM....
But it is a fact that the SGS runs much slower when the free RAM is low. This is the experience of all the SGS'es I have tried and my own as well. At least this is the case when running 2.1. I have not tested anyone with 2.2 yet.

It s starts to lag when memory is below 40 mb. So when it s low and you start an application it starts to lag. I set it to 50-55-60 and got hardly any lag. No need to keep so much free ram
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

matty___ said:
It s starts to lag when memory is below 40 mb. So when it s low and you start an application it starts to lag. I set it to 50-55-60 and got hardly any lag. No need to keep so much free ram
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which ROM are you using? as the low memory killer level for background apps is set at 40M which means you should have 40M free all the time or it will start killing background apps. This is also why task killers are useless, free ram is wasted ram for android.
I never had the experience that more free RAM is faster, perhaps with the stock rom but JC and upwards are all good by default. Animations off + Oneclick lagfix (or another) and the phone stays totally lag free.
Being an android user for 1,5 years now i'm very confident Taskkillers are useless except when an app is stuck. I've had periods where I used them allot but the phone only gets slower as the killed apps have to be loaded into the memory again.

Finguz said:
QFT!
What is the point of having memory if it is constantly empty?
Think about it this way...If you had five friends at your house and you have five chairs, do you make 2 or 3 of your friends stand so there is always empty space or do you let everyone sit down and worry about something worthwhile?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Provided you are not expecting anymore friends. The problem happens if all your 5 friends are happily seated and along comes 2 more friends a-visiting. So you have to now move 2 inactive (for want of a better word) friends out of the seats so that you can accommodate the 2 new ones. This takes time. So why not move these friends out as soon as they become inactive so that the space is readily available when someone comes calling?

Try to have a read about garbage collector before argueing about free memory.
The more you try to have a large amount of memory, the more you will need major GC (and during major GC all activity is frozen).
If you let the system manage memory, it does minor GC as needed when it reaches min memory waterline (seems to be 50Mo on SGS).
Let the system do its job.
Get rid of task killer.

Mykron said:
free memory is bad memory!
why don't let android do it's job?! this ist linux with a clever memory management, not windows 95!!! deinstall all auto task killer android is handling the memory very well. it uses all it can get and if it's not enough it kills old uses apps from it. why have free memory, there is absolutely no reason for that! ram is fast, let the often used apps be there not on slow sd or nand!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I completely disagree. OK, it is better to use memory, but the android memory management is extremely inefficient since it does not know which foreground and background processes are important to the user and which are not, even though it tries to figure that out. Since the Galaxy S does not allow the system to use the full 512MB of memory, this can be a critical factor. And the Galaxy S definitely lags massively when less then 70 or so MB of free RAM is available this is definitely a fact.
The biggest problem is that you cannot manually close apps and only have multitasking access to the last 6 apps used. If you use 7 apps simultaneously, the 1st app still consumes memory but you cannot even switch back to it. And there are so many useless background processes, starting up over and over again and consuming hundreds of MB memory if they are not killed in regular fashion.
Who needs gesture search, amazon mp3, layar, and all the samsung crap running in the background all the time. If you only have 10 such applications and each of them only consumes 15MB of ram, 150MB are wasted for nothing.
Every second market application registers itself as autostart on every boot, so to use a autostart manager is also mandatory.
Since everybody can easily develop for Android the application quality and resource efficiency is not always perfect. So in my opinion Android needs a task manager, this is why even Samsung integrates such a application.
Using a well configured ATK (set to ignore system applications, widgets and apps frequently used for multitasking and killing every else on screen off) and autokiller (strict setting) in addition to Autostart Manager (had to remove 40!!! useless apps from automatic startup) and lagfix, the SGS runs perfectly smooth.

[APP] BFreeMem Alternative - Indirectly Freeing RAM

I think many of us are using some kind of task killer. BUT, I find task killer sometimes cause more problem than it solves. And sometimes it doesnt really increase free RAM.
What I did was create a simple app to force Android memory manager to free RAM (by unloading tasks based on its own logic). This way you eliminate 3rd party task killer wrongful termination of tasks such as those active ones required by widgets etc.
This app just basically starts and creates a huge heap (forcing Android to free RAM) and then closes.
(You may still see this task linger in memory after you run it, but it will be unloaded the next time you start other app. You will see your free RAM increased a lot)
====Edit
You May not see free RAM increase immediately after running. You will see RAM increase a lot a bit later after you have started other app (which forces BfreeMem to be unloaded from memory)
Tip: Just put a shortcut on desktop. Click it when your RAM is low (<50-60Mb) and it will do its job. Dont run it when your free RAM is above 90Mb.

I'm trying it
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

This app should be tested by more Samsung Galaxy S owners to see if is working as it should be or not.

Try already.... No diff.... What's the difference?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App

cosmoboi said:
Try already.... No diff.... What's the difference?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
mib1800 already had got ur all private data, no more diffs.

cosmoboi said:
Try already.... No diff.... What's the difference?
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You have to wait for BfreeMem to be unloaded. (If you are impatient use a Task killer to unload it and you see it frees up lots of RAM.
Basically BFreeMem is a very bloated. When it starts it force Android memory manager to unload other tasks to cater to its RAM requirement. After that if you start other app, Android mem mgr will unload Bfreemem thus freeing huge chunks.
I tweak it to works best if your free RAM is around 50-60Mb. When I run it and when BfreeMem is unloaded later, free RAM goes up to about 100Mb.
btw: this app requires no permission so your data is safe

AutoKiller is a much better alternative.

The concept sounds correct. Not entire sure if it will work in practice.

psychedelic'd said:
AutoKiller is a much better alternative.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
My purpose is to have something that does not circumvent Android memory manager which keeps track of tasks and their stats. It knows better what tasks are best to kill based on their usage/last access/active state/priority. Furthermore, if Android memory manager kill a task due to low memory, it will save the state for that task so that the next time that task is used the saved state is restored.
3rd party task killers sometimes mess this up by killing tasks which are actively use (resulting in those tasks being restarted just after being killed leading to wasted power and more lag) or killing dependent tasks such as those used by widgets without saved state causing widgets to malfunction.
snapper.fishes said:
The concept sounds correct. Not entire sure if it will work in practice.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I am using it. It does free up RAM. Is it useful? Depends. If you have lots of active apps (widgets/service etc), those freed RAM is filled up soon as Android restore back those "killed" tasks. Not much gain here. On the other hand, if you have lots of zombie apps lingering in memory then yes. The extra RAM does give a boost to the next app you open

AutoKiller is less of a task killer and more of a memory manager. Sort of like what your app is trying to do, but much better. More information: http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
Your concept is good, but having an app that continually increases ram usage will waste battery. Then having to kill that app manually in order to free up ram is tedious. Just my 2 cents.
The new task manager in Touchwiz has a function to manually clear ram any way, which works great.

psychedelic'd said:
AutoKiller is less of a task killer and more of a memory manager. Sort of like what your app is trying to do, but much better. More information: http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
Your concept is good, but having an app that continually increases ram usage will waste battery. Then having to kill that app manually in order to free up ram is tedious. Just my 2 cents.
The new task manager in Touchwiz has a function to manually clear ram any way, which works great.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OK. AutoKiller is changing Linux configuration. Unfortunately, it needs root.
I have used the TouchWiz TaskMgr clean Ram at safe level - it still messed up my widgets (Beautiful widgets, weather & toggle)
Bfreemem app does not continually run or increase RAM usage. You just run it when the free RAM is low (or close to threshold). At this low RAM level it just knocks other tasks out of RAM. btw: You should NOT run it when you have huge amount of free RAM. You should run it when RAM is low like <50Mb.
You dont really have to kill Bfreemem task manually since it will be quickly unloaded by the Android memory manager when RAM is required since its state is finished.
JUst put a shortcut on the desktop and click it when you feel RAM level is low and it will do its job.

Can it be used with autokiller?
It could be also automated to check if memory is low, and automatically kill applications. Battery drain would be present in that case tho..

Never has the default task killer from samsung messed up my widgets including Beautiful weather, I tried using task killer and never saw the benefits of it since andriod automatically keeps 40MB of free ram...

EarlZ said:
Never has the default task killer from samsung messed up my widgets including Beautiful weather, I tried using task killer and never saw the benefits of it since andriod automatically keeps 40MB of free ram...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
When I try the option Level 1 - Clear Memory (in Samsung task killer), my beautiful widget clock stop working.
Soniboy84 said:
Can it be used with autokiller?
It could be also automated to check if memory is low, and automatically kill applications. Battery drain would be present in that case tho..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Personally, I dont use task killer. Not sure whether Autokiller kills tasks physically or just adjust some running config. Just have a feeling task killers (those that kill tasks physically) cause RAM leak. For example when my phone reboot, I can see at least 12 tasks (in Advanced Task Killer) and free RAM is about 95Mb. If I physically kill those tasks, my RAM may temporarily goes up to 130Mb but sometime later free RAM drops to 50-60Mb and there were no more tasks to kill.
When I use Bfreemem, my free RAM fluctuates betw. 60-100 Mb and I can still see all/most of those tasks that were there just after boot-up.
If you have one of those scheduler/timer app, you can just use those to schedule Bfreemem to run regularly. (I can build another timer app to schedule)

Excellent Task Manager / Cache Cleaner

Been using Quick System Info PRO for the past few days, and am truly impressed! Multi-functional as a task manager to close / ignore running apps...cache cleaner keeps system from bogging down. Process tracking / cpu usage tracking. Tons of system specs available to view, etc. Uninstall apps directly from this as well. Find out exactly what apps start on boot up, and trim as you see fit.
I know memory is at a premium for us Archos IT users...I encourage you to check this app out. It's a little more complicated than your standard task killer, but truly helps trim things down. Best of all, it's free! Option to donate to disable ads, I donated just cuz the dev blew me away with this app!!
Enjoy, and please offer up your own opinions!

How do u change what programs run on startup? I downloaded it and its good but I don't see that feature.

Task killers (apparently) shouldn't be used on Android (generally... there are always exceptions)
If an Android app is created properly, it shouldn't be eating away at the RAM, and Android will free up what it needs.
If it killed everything, then the multitasking feature will be as useless as Apple's
I won't explain further, I'll just link Lifehacker instead:
http://lifehacker.com/5650894/andro...ed-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
Please note: Although I don't use task killers my self, I don't disagree with them. I'm just putting this out there so you can make your own minds up

thefunkaygibbon said:
Task killers (apparently) shouldn't be used on Android (generally... there are always exceptions)
If an Android app is created properly, it shouldn't be eating away at the RAM, and Android will free up what it needs.
If it killed everything, then the multitasking feature will be as useless as Apple's
I won't explain further, I'll just link Lifehacker instead:
http://lifehacker.com/5650894/andro...ed-what-they-do-and-why-you-shouldnt-use-them
Please note: Although I don't use task killers my self, I don't disagree with them. I'm just putting this out there so you can make your own minds up
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
While I certainly agree with this...do you own an Archos? Task Killer is almost necessary for the Archos 70it. Until they increase memory allocations, the need to minimize what's running at startup or any given time is absolutely needed.

Bandage said:
While I certainly agree with this...do you own an Archos? Task Killer is almost necessary for the Archos 70it. Until they increase memory allocations, the need to minimize what's running at startup or any given time is absolutely needed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree but I still can't figure out how to configure the startup. Can you let me know how?

Bandage said:
While I certainly agree with this...do you own an Archos? Task Killer is almost necessary for the Archos 70it. Until they increase memory allocations, the need to minimize what's running at startup or any given time is absolutely needed.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I disagree. They are not needed. I don't use one on my 101.

blazingwolf said:
I disagree. They are not needed. I don't use one on my 101.
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So what are you using your tablet for? Reading ebooks? If you have more than 1 user process running at a time, in addition to system processes it gets bogged down. Android is great at multitasking...256k RAM is not. I have my 70 trimmed down to skinny, having removed some bloatware apps. Normal is around 55-60% of RAM usage during standby.
If I decide to break out a game, like Dungeon Hunter or another system hog...I run into occassional FC's if I haven't freed up some RAM. A TASK MANAGER helps me select the things I want to shut down to free that RAM for an app / process that I choose to run. Stop confusing TASK KILLER with TASK MANAGER. (Was a typo in my response earlier) Yes the app allows me to kill tasks, the difference is...I'm killing what I CHOOSE to kill.
PS - I haven't done much to alter start up apps thru this Manager, just have used it to trim fat and gain control of my RAM usage.

Bandage said:
So what are you using your tablet for? Reading ebooks? If you have more than 1 user process running at a time, in addition to system processes it gets bogged down. Android is great at multitasking...256k RAM is not. I have my 70 trimmed down to skinny, having removed some bloatware apps. Normal is around 55-60% of RAM usage during standby.
If I decide to break out a game, like Dungeon Hunter or another system hog...I run into occassional FC's if I haven't freed up some RAM. A TASK MANAGER helps me select the things I want to shut down to free that RAM for an app / process that I choose to run. Stop confusing TASK KILLER with TASK MANAGER. (Was a typo in my response earlier) Yes the app allows me to kill tasks, the difference is...I'm killing what I CHOOSE to kill.
PS - I haven't done much to alter start up apps thru this Manager, just have used it to trim fat and gain control of my RAM usage.
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Play games, read books, video, music, etc. Just about anything you can do with it.

I also used to have a task killer and decided to install Watchdog which works in a different way. Works a lot better that all the rest of the task killers I have used and did not have any issues. Apps run smooth even if I have more than one running.

thanks
i use this apk

Bandage said:
Been using Quick System Info PRO for the past few days, and am truly impressed! Multi-functional as a task manager to close / ignore running apps...cache cleaner keeps system from bogging down. Process tracking / cpu usage tracking. Tons of system specs available to view, etc. Uninstall apps directly from this as well. Find out exactly what apps start on boot up, and trim as you see fit.
I know memory is at a premium for us Archos IT users...I encourage you to check this app out. It's a little more complicated than your standard task killer, but truly helps trim things down. Best of all, it's free! Option to donate to disable ads, I donated just cuz the dev blew me away with this app!!
Enjoy, and please offer up your own opinions!
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There is a YouTube video showing why not to use a taskiller, and how much lag there is when you kill all the apps, let them cache in the OS and its faster, don't be afraid of having low memory, this was done on the 70 tab 8 gig, sorry for no link, its one of the top ones.
Sent from my PC36100 using XDA App

[Q] Total memory less than 768 MB???

Can anyone explain the amount of RAM that this phone is suppose to have?
The specs for the phone lists 768 MB. However, the total memory that comes up is 617940 kB.
Thanks.

Bull Shot said:
Can anyone explain the amount of RAM that this phone is suppose to have?
The specs for the phone lists 768 MB. However, the total memory that comes up is 617940 kB.
Thanks.
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where are you finding this number? i am at 758 MB. since i have a bunch of apps installed, that would seem about right.

How are you guys getting so much free ram? When I check on Task Killer, whenever I kill all the apps I'm not using it usually shows 358 mb ... and programs I'm not using automatically keep running (i.e Maps).

hmm maybe im not checking the right place? i'm getting my 758 mb number from settings--SD and phone storage. the internal phone storage tells me 758mb.
on an unrelated note though, you shouldn't use task killers. they are considered by most to be more of a drain on your battery life as android is already setup to manage closing unused apps on its own.

Many people use the term "memory" to mean system memory as well as storage. I try to avoid calling system storage as "memory" and tend to use "storage" instead, or refer to the type of storage.
Total ram is around 768mb. Part of it is reserved (not sure why, possibly for filesystem caching) so around 603mb is available. For this platform that is a healthy chunk of RAM to work with. Even with my hefty usage I have ~126mb free.
Internal storage is something like 2gb, with it partially consumed by the Android install as well as NAND configuration adjustments for reliability which cause some of the storage space to be consumed through hardware (there's an excellent explanation of this somewhere, don't have a link handy), resulting in about 1.1gb being available. I have 103 apps installed, 523.5mb of the internal storage used, with 638.8mb available.
There was an excellent tool posted on xda (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1066060) called Android Optimizer that gives a lot of good information about memory, storage, cpu usage, etc. I'd recommend checking it out. It's not available on the market and it is a little buggy so use it with a bit of caution if you choose to use any of the optimization functions.

cool. thanks for the explanation nimdae!

There have been so, so, so many posts on this topic that I will not rehash them all here. Instead, I will ask a simple question: For what do you use all that free RAM?
Ask yourself that question, and be serious about it. I think you will find yourself uninstalling your task managers and memory optimizers before long.
Edit: to avoid unnecessary discussion, Watchdog is in fact neither of those, and I would highly recommend it as the only memory app you will ever need.
Edit 2: the total RAM displayed is the RAM that is actually available to be used by anything the user may want to run. As a poster earlier said, the system reserves a certain amount of RAM for its own use to keep important processes moving along. The reserved RAM is not available, and so doesn't appear in total RAM. Unless you want to uninstall the OS. Then you could have access to all 768 MBs.

I would like to reiterate why you should not use automatic task killers.
As of, I believe, Android 2.0, the garbage collection and memory management was significantly improved. However, this was not a new system in Android, it always existed.
How it works:
If you haven't noticed with Android, when you leave an app, it doesn't close it unless the app specifically does something to end the process. This is by design. Android allows the app to remain in memory. Frequently used apps will load faster with this design. A "task" that is not killed and is in the background ONLY consumes memory, it does not "run" (in Linux terms, the process is actually in a "stopped" state so the task can't do anything anyway). Only a "service" can run in the background. Most apps that have long running services have lightweight services.
If an application loads that requires more memory than is available, Android will examine backgrounded tasks for candidates to be killed to free up memory. This makes it so as many tasks as possible can remain in memory for better performance. In understanding this, you should know that if you have a large amount of memory, and memory usage is high, this is a GOOD THING. With the amount of memory in the I2, there is a lot of breathing space for this.
There is one other case where a backgrounded task will be killed: if it has been in the background for a certain period of time without being brought forward. Killing a task to free up memory to load another task can actually be a little cpu expensive (but not THAT much) so this can make it slightly easier.
Please note that backgrounded tasks WILL NOT contribute to battery drain. Only tasks at the front and services will. Killing your backgrounded calculator will do nothing for you other than free that small amount of memory it uses. Used memory does not contribute to extra battery drain as DRAM refreshes happen on ALL cells anyway.
Background services can also be made candidates for being killed. If an app needs more memory than can be made available by killing backgrounded tasks, then services become targets to be killed as well.
Automatic task killers cause a couple of problems. A less major problem is you lose that one benefit you get by keeping tasks in the background: performance. I don't just mean how fast it loads. If it can bring a backgrounded task to the front from memory rather than load from storage, you remove extra processing to load the app, including storage access, that contribute to higher battery drain. The other problem is a poorly configured task killer can break things like notifications.
Managing your services is always a good idea. Having a lot of services running means background processes that are capable of contributing to battery drain. Additionally, there are apps with misbehaving services (services that consume resources or use features they shouldn't). While I'm against automatic task killers, using something to monitor and manage services is a good idea. Just always keep in mind the implications for killing a service: it may affect a feature to an app that you would rather not impact.

Excellent explanation nimdae! Task killers are the devil.

On another note, my posts are getting too long...

nimdae said:
On another note, my posts are getting too long...
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Everything is longer in Texas.

xgunther said:
Everything is longer in Texas.
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That's what s...no, that's too easy.
Move along, nothing to see.

Before I read this I was like a task Nazi. I killed my tasks often, but now I think I will just let them be. Nice write up BTW. Very informative.
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA App

TB13 said:
Before I read this I was like a task Nazi. I killed my tasks often, but now I think I will just let them be. Nice write up BTW. Very informative.
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA App
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Remember: I'm not saying don't manage things. Poorly behaving services are the #1 cause of high battery drain (at least on non-LTE devices), and this will be even more problematic when you overclock.

xgunther said:
Excellent explanation nimdae! Task killers are the devil.
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I tried not using them and I get better battery life with them...I use it maybe 3 times a day after heavy multi tasking. It's to each their own..but I see results for it..like 5 extra hours.
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA Premium App

knipp21 said:
I tried not using them and I get better battery life with them...I use it maybe 3 times a day after heavy multi tasking. It's to each their own..but I see results for it..like 5 extra hours.
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA Premium App
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If you get that much extra, you have a misbehaving app. Better to get the app developer to fix it or find an alternative.

nimdae said:
If you get that much extra, you have a misbehaving app. Better to get the app developer to fix it or find an alternative.
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True, I don't need to use it often though lol
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA Premium App

I'm in Texas as well.
sent from a phone without root.

I use a task killer only to manually kill an app that freezes or something. Its easier than going to manage applications. I have the autokill disabled.
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA Premium App

AngelsPunishment said:
I use a task killer only to manually kill an app that freezes or something. Its easier than going to manage applications. I have the autokill disabled.
Sent from my ADR6350 using XDA Premium App
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CyanogenMod (maybe other ROMs) have a feature to kill a frozen app by holding the back button (long press, whatever). However, this can also be an annoyance on systems where for unknown reasons it registers a long press on a tap (my eris did this a lot).