Do you need a task manager installed?

[iJason#WN]

Do I need a task manager installed?

Is it necessary do have a task manager installed like advanced task killer or will it not make a difference as far as performance and battery life goes?

 

[Roy Aguilera]

It's not necessary.

 

[iJason#WN]

I was wondering cuz I read an article saying that task managers actually do more harm then good.

 

[GivenToFly]

I was wondering cuz I read an article saying that task managers actually do more harm then good.

Really? Do you have a link to this information? I'd like to see the other side.

 

[iJason#WN]

Here's the article I read I found it on another thread FAQ: Why You Shouldn?t Be Using a Task Killer with Android ? Geek For Me ? Android CDMA Sprint Hero

 

[ridavid81]

After reading this and doing some testing with Pandora and Tune Wiki I noticed these processes ended very soon after exiting the program. I was checking this within Running Services. I then did some testing with Shop Savvy and this too closed out from Running Services within a few seconds of backing out of the app.

So as long as I used the back key android was killing the process. The funny thing is Advanced Task Manager was still showing that TuniWiki was running and Shop Savvy was running.

This tells me Advanced Task Manager needs some work especially since it was showing TuneWiki twice when in fact it wasn't running at all.

I went ahead and uninstalled Advanced Task Manager for now which was taking 22k in resources anyhow. I'll see how my droid performs without me ending tasks through the task manager.

Thanks for sharing that article. It was useful.

 

[iJason#WN]

After reading this and doing some testing with Pandora and Tune Wiki I noticed these processes ended very soon after exiting the program. I was checking this within Running Services. I then did some testing with Shop Savvy and this too closed out from Running Services within a few seconds of backing out of the app.

So as long as I used the back key android was killing the process. The funny thing is Advanced Task Manager was still showing that TuniWiki was running and Shop Savvy was running.

This tells me Advanced Task Manager needs some work especially since it was showing TuneWiki twice when in fact it wasn't running at all.

I went ahead and uninstalled Advanced Task Manager for now which was taking 22k in resources anyhow. I'll see how my droid performs without me ending tasks through the task manager.

Thanks for sharing that article. It was useful.

No problem. I uninstalled advanced task manager as well and my phone does seem to be running better however its only been a few hours I will report back after a day or two of further testing.

 

[Flyguide83]

For what it's worth, I have been running without it now for about a month.... My phone seems to be doing just fine. Battery seems to last longer too..

 

[graymulligan]

I also uninstalled my ATK a couple days ago, and I'm not seeing any negative results from not killing tasks. I don't know if its running better, but its not running worse, which was the important part. Looks like the article (which was written by someone much more versed in Linux and the like than I am) was spot on.

 

[dagostin]

my 2 cents is that whether I use it or not, i do not see any change in anything. It's so hard to tell what's doing what anyways because the android OS can restart apps that are setup to restart anyways and even tho an app process is still active, it doesn't mean its doing anything, just idle and using up no resources. I've also noticed that after you boot for first time and check the process list, many of my apps are there, even the one's you'd never expect to start at boot such as "Shop savvy" that have no widgets or anything that shoudl be running in background. Ininitially i'd kill all these on boot to give me a clear head What i've found though, is that if I do not use the task killer after boot, and just wait some time, many of those processes that started at boot are killed off, so seems the OS handles the memory fairly well and kills stuff that's not needed and is not priority.

My preference is to have a task killer but i do not OCD and use it all the time, rarely ever anymore. What I like it for is for bugs in certain software, such as the stock browser and beautiful widgets for example, sometimes will need GPS for something and if im inside, will try to find a signal for so long, hurting battery. When these things happen from time to time, i use the task manager to kill them.

 

[droidweasel]

For what it's worth, I have been running without it now for about a month.... My phone seems to be doing just fine. Battery seems to last longer too..

same here. been about a month. and everything is running smoothly.

 

[cmorty72#AC]

I was using Task Killer when I first got my Droid. But noticed allot of screen freezing and alike. I uninstalled, and then tried ATK... same thing (keep in mind, this all occurred with both apps running for about two weeks straight after being installed).
I've been running my Droid without any task killing app for about a month now, and everything seems to be cool as mud. No issues whatsoever. My battery life hasn't changed much either.

*Off topic*
Just noticed I hit my 100th. post!

 

[Cnote187]

my 2 cents is that whether I use it or not, i do not see any change in anything. It's so hard to tell what's doing what anyways because the android OS can restart apps that are setup to restart anyways and even tho an app process is still active, it doesn't mean its doing anything, just idle and using up no resources. I've also noticed that after you boot for first time and check the process list, many of my apps are there, even the one's you'd never expect to start at boot such as "Shop savvy" that have no widgets or anything that shoudl be running in background. Ininitially i'd kill all these on boot to give me a clear head What i've found though, is that if I do not use the task killer after boot, and just wait some time, many of those processes that started at boot are killed off, so seems the OS handles the memory fairly well and kills stuff that's not needed and is not priority.

My preference is to have a task killer but i do not OCD and use it all the time, rarely ever anymore. What I like it for is for bugs in certain software, such as the stock browser and beautiful widgets for example, sometimes will need GPS for something and if im inside, will try to find a signal for so long, hurting battery. When these things happen from time to time, i use the task manager to kill them.

I agree with this post there are some things that happen with the droid such as GPS that you are going to want to kill manually and for that you need task manager. Just dont run it in the background and use it as a tool when needed

 

[BoNg420]

when I have task manager running usually get FC's so I don't keep it running.

 

[GivenToFly]

I went ahead and got rid of advanced task killer, and have actually noticed a slight improvement in overall performance...but only slight. The only negative I've noticed is that every once in a while the phone will get very sluggish for a minute or two then be fine again. It never did that when ATK was installed.

 

[ERDude]

Activity | Android Developers Follow the Activity Lifecycle link about 1/4 way down.

The abridged easy to read version.

4 stages of Application life

1. Active - the application currently in use, last to be killed, rarely if ever killed, only killed when the phones needs the resources to remain operating.
2. Paused - application is still active or visible, it maintains all recent application interactions, i.e paused to answer a phone call, text, etc, 2nd to be killed when a device needs additional resources
3. Stopped - application is no longer active or visible, 1st to be killed when the device needs additional resources
4. Killed - a paused or stopped application that has been killed by android because memory and resources were needed elsewhere

 

[ikith]

Activity | Android Developers Follow the Activity Lifecycle link about 1/4 way down.

The abridged easy to read version.

4 stages of Application life

1. Active - the application currently in use, last to be killed, rarely if ever killed, only killed when the phones needs the resources to remain operating.
2. Paused - application is still active or visible, it maintains all recent application interactions, i.e paused to answer a phone call, text, etc, 2nd to be killed when a device needs additional resources
3. Stopped - application is no longer active or visible, 1st to be killed when the device needs additional resources
4. Killed - a paused or stopped application that has been killed by android because memory and resources were needed elsewhere

AKA Task managers are not needed.

 

[tj722#AC]

I'm an Android newbie, but so far I've only been using ATK to kill applications that won't stop using the GPS even when the app is not active. Several programs have had this issue.

 

[nox]

I don't use any task managers.
I used to though.

I honestly haven't seen much of a difference, if any. I tried just about every popular task manager and everything still seems the same. As for GPS/WIFI/BLUETOOTH I just have the power widget for that

 

[prometheus]

This was wonderful information. Thank you, thank you, thank you for the link to that article.

I was using Taskiller primarily for battery optimization and not memory management. It always struck me as odd that when I would review battery usage the program I was using to enhance battery life was responsible for at least 4% of the daily drain.

Thanks for this info and the personal testing many here have done - UNINSTALING my task killer