CAUSE OF MINOR PROBLEMS ON DX

[tmax1964]

I got my X on launch day. Didnt really know if there were problems off the bat, as I was learning the phone. This is my first smart phone. 1 1/2 weeks later Verizon offered a Droid X Class. I though wow this would be great especially being new to smart phones and since it didnt come with an instruction booklet. The verizon rep sat down and went over the phone and its operations. The first thing he said is YOU NEED A TASK KILLER on your phone, he immedialtey installed the ADVANCED TASK MANAGER, he also put a widget on my phone and said to hit this two to three times a day, He said this would save on my battery.
Being green to all this I believed him.(Prior to going in, the first week I had the phone my battery was lasting about 10 hours and I thought thats because I havnt put it down trying to learn it.) I left feeling good. My battery was lasting two days without charging it. I was impressed. I started to notice I couldnt get my caller ID read to work, My alarm clock/timer stopped working, It was rebooting on its own every once in a while. I went back to verizon and they said this will all be fixed once the next update comes out not to worry, he said to download another alarm clock app from the market which I did and that seemed to work. after having this on my phone for about 2 1/2 weeks I noticed by battery draining fast,had to charge every night. the verizon people said that it was still good to get through a full day some others are not.
I wasnt satisified with this answer so I went to Motorola forum and was reading some of there posts about caller Id issues. Someone from motorola said they dont know why verizon is putting these task killers on the phone, he recommeneded I uninstall, which I did to see if this fixes the problems. Well guess what it did, everything started working again on the phone the way it was suppose to. I pulled off charger by 7am and coming home from work at 6 my phone is at 60-70% depending on usgae, I do alot of texting,making calls facebooking, On days I add taking lots of photos by 6 its about 40-50%, Plus i have weather and toggle widget with animations on my screen all the time.
If I didnt charge the phone one night I might squak by the next day if I was lucky. SO I feel this is worth trying, If you have a task killer on your phone and your phone is having issues try unistalling the app, do a shut down of the phone and see what happens over a weeks time, You might find all your little bug problems going away. Good luck

 

[WAldenIV]

I have no idea why Verizon felt compelled to install task killers on DXs before they left stores. They did so on my launch day phone and I removed it less than a week later. You would think that Google and Motorola would not want VZW messing with the phones like that.

Don't use task killers, children!

 

[EinZtein]

I've tested this extensively on a MyTouch(1.6) and a Droid(2.1).

There was absolutely no difference using Automatic Task Killer or not.

Now, if you don't know how to manage your phone's OS and are constantly opening apps and letting them run in the background(like if you open browser to m.espn.com or some site that refreshes constantly and you don't "exit" the app) well then, an automatic task killer may work good for you provided you set it up correctly.

 

[EinZtein]

...and the reason nothing was working correctly with ATK is probably because it wasn't set up correctly with proper exceptions...

 

[tmax1964]

i didnt set it up the guy at the verizon store did

 

[Bond32]

I have no idea why Verizon felt compelled to install task killers on DXs before they left stores. They did so on my launch day phone and I removed it less than a week later. You would think that Google and Motorola would not want VZW messing with the phones like that.

Don't use task killers, children!

Verizon is not near as knowledgeable on just about everything. Thats why. I tried to have an intelligent conversation regarding the recent leak with a verizon employee and he just made me want to punch a baby I was so frustrated.

 

[DaRkL3AD3R]

The truth about the whole ATK thing that no one is willing to say is that they do their job. Period.

However just because they do their job doesn't mean they require no work. YOU MUST IGNORE CERTAIN APPS, otherwise your system WILL tank. This is where the truth to all those "don't use task killers" comes in.

Tech savvy people will tell not so tech savvy people to steer clear. They make up excuses saying that they're bad and hurt your system. This is only half true. It's true because it will close many apps that either need to run or will simply reload in a short period of time, causing a loss in battery life due to CPU cycles and data read/write.

What they're not telling you is that they're making these statements based on the fact that the average phone user won't know a system process from say, Pandora or some other 3rd party useless app.

This is where the problem lies. If you don't setup your task killer properly it will do just what it says, kill EVERYTHING in sight. You MUST set it up the right way and have it ignore pretty much anything thats a system process, or it will have negative effects on your battery life and performance.

Set it up the right way and it works just fine. Through my eyes though this is pointless as we can do just that through the systems stock Manage Applications menu lol

So end of the day, task killers are not apocalyptic disasters in the form of an app that people make them out to be. They're unnecessary to have installed but not for all the sheeple reasons you hear preached day in and day out.

 

[doctorlove316]

Again?

How to properly set up and use a task killer (Oh, yes, I went there!)

 

[tmax1964]

The truth about the whole ATK thing that no one is willing to say is that they do their job. Period.

However just because they do their job doesn't mean they require no work. YOU MUST IGNORE CERTAIN APPS, otherwise your system WILL tank. This is where the truth to all those "don't use task killers" comes in.

Tech savvy people will tell not so tech savvy people to steer clear. They make up excuses saying that they're bad and hurt your system. This is only half true. It's true because it will close many apps that either need to run or will simply reload in a short period of time, causing a loss in battery life due to CPU cycles and data read/write.

What they're not telling you is that they're making these statements based on the fact that the average phone user won't know a system process from say, Pandora or some other 3rd party useless app.

This is where the problem lies. If you don't setup your task killer properly it will do just what it says, kill EVERYTHING in sight. You MUST set it up the right way and have it ignore pretty much anything thats a system process, or it will have negative effects on your battery life and performance.

Set it up the right way and it works just fine. Through my eyes though this is pointless as we can do just that through the systems stock Manage Applications menu lol

So end of the day, task killers are not apocalyptic disasters in the form of an app that people make them out to be. They're unnecessary to have installed but not for all the sheeple reasons you hear preached day in and day out.

Can you tell me this, Do you have the droid x and if its not rooted can you tell me what apps I should exclude from the kills. I read the link below and im not sure what exactly it means. I understand i have to exclude the Weather & toggle widget and the alarm clock as it updates but Im talking the stock apps what should I not touch to kill? Hope you can enlighten me here

 

[DaRkL3AD3R]

Can you tell me this, Do you have the droid x and if its not rooted can you tell me what apps I should exclude from the kills. I read the link below and im not sure what exactly it means. I understand i have to exclude the Weather & toggle widget and the alarm clock as it updates but Im talking the stock apps what should I not touch to kill? Hope you can enlighten me here

Basically the list is huge. The only apps you're going to want to kill are apps that you downloaded. If you have apps like Pandora, that can be safely killed. Emulators (SNESoid, PSX4droid, NESoid, Gameboid etc). Videoplayers like Rockplayer can be killed. Make sure you are not using any of these apps, even if its running in the background as it can have negative side effects for premature death. Ex: you have Pandora open and you're streaming music. You have Pandora listed as a kill app. You kill your list of apps and Pandora stops playing music. You must be smart about what apps you want to kill. This is why I don't suggest using task killer APPS. You shouldn't really have to kill apps, but if you want to do so do it the built in app manager, explained further below.

An example of something that should not be killed are services that look like "com.motorola.blur.home"

Things like this should be ignored. Heres the thing though, since all we're looking to stop are apps that you downloaded and you don't want to kill system apps/services, you can do this WITHOUT using an app task killer. Just go to Menu -> Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications and if you're running 2.1 hit menu button and click Filter -> Running, or if you're running 2.2 click the Running tab up top.

DO KILL:

Pandora
SNESoid
Zelda Soundboard
Rockplayer
Astro

DO NOT KILL:

com.motorola.blur.services
com.android.ttl
Weather Service
com.google.contacts

etc etc. You get the idea.