Please Read: A warning about Task Managers
- Thread starter Cory Streater
- Start date
Let me ask you fine folks a question.
What do you do about programs that are sucking cpu cycles instead of ram? Memory management is but one part of the equation.
Thats going to slow the phone down and kill the battery. Not every program forced into the background behaves as you want it to.
It seems to me a task killer is the best option for these situations, and yes it does happen once in a while.
What do you do about programs that are sucking cpu cycles instead of ram? Memory management is but one part of the equation.
Thats going to slow the phone down and kill the battery. Not every program forced into the background behaves as you want it to.
It seems to me a task killer is the best option for these situations, and yes it does happen once in a while.
- Oct 11, 2009
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That's when you use a task killer. They aren't inherently evil, just grossly misused. A task killer is just an easy way of running top, getting the pid and killing that app, which as you point out is sometimes a helpful thing.
The problem arises when people use a task manager randomly, or even worse in some sort of auto-kill fashion. IMO Cory is right on the money. For most users, a task killer does more harm than good. If you're the user that can identify a runaway process, you're the user that knows when and how to use a task killer.
But task managers help conserve battery life. So for as much as I use my droid, I don't want more than 2-3 apps open.
yeah the warning is fine, but maybe a little strong. As pointed out, task managers do not have to be evil at all. They are mostly misused where people set them to auto kill things or people OCD and click the "kill all" button that most of them have. I enjoy a task manager for the convenience and speed in which i can look at whats running and kill something if there is an issue.
@corydunbar - I would say that your use of the task manager is not needed at all. These are the types of things that you do not need to do and the performance benefits of doing it are negligible and a time waste. Not trying to be rude, but trying to keep no more than 2, 3 apps open all the time is obsessive, and will not really improve anything.
@corydunbar - I would say that your use of the task manager is not needed at all. These are the types of things that you do not need to do and the performance benefits of doing it are negligible and a time waste. Not trying to be rude, but trying to keep no more than 2, 3 apps open all the time is obsessive, and will not really improve anything.
Have you read anything on this thread? Do what your going to do, but when you force a running program to stop It glitches the os. It may not be noticable all the time because the phone can recover from it in most cases. But just know that forcing closes uses more memory than leaving it alone and letting Linux deal with it the way its programed to do.
If a program in the background is sucking CPU cycles, it will drain the battery. You guys are thinking in one dimension only. Memory is not the only factor.
- Oct 11, 2009
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Correct, but I think in this case Cory is trying to build a general consensus about the use of a Task Killer app. Android is a platform that's growing like a weed, and that means it's going to attract a metric butt-load of users who have no idea what's going on behind the widgets. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.
But these users need some sort of knowledge base to work with. Let's be honest - Android's first year was mostly geeks who saw the potential to push a mediocre phone to unbelievable performance because of the open nature of it's operating system. My 19 year old daughter, who is regretting her decision of buying the Pixie, is selling old textbooks to buy an Android phone. She wants it because it looks spectacular, and does just about anything a teenage girl would want in a phone. She's not going to root it, she doesn't care what's under the hood. She only wants it to "run well" and deliver her content as promised. She NEEDS confirmation from people like the staff at this website to guide her, because she isn't going to research it on her own. The average consumer is going to look to people like Cory for guidance.
The best solution in this case is simply to advise that the end users do not run an application that has potential to break the running system, and when the random issue like a runaway process pops up, remember it's a computer. Sometimes they flake out. Reboot it and it gets all better again.
Of course, a task killer is just one more app running in the background, potentially sucking CPU cycles.
My experience so far has been that a task killer is unnecessary. It does not make my phone run faster, or battery last longer. That said, I don't think that it is wasteful or dangerous - my phone seemed to run equally well, and suffer from occasional lags, with and without a task killer. I've been without for a few days now and it's just fine. Run it if you want to; it won't hurt anything.
I agree with all the former BB owners, thought I needed one when I switched, but I think the Droid does a good job on its own, however I wish they did have a way to close the apps instead of just backing out like you have to now.
My son and I got our droids the same day. His began running very slowly (by slowly, I mean taking ten to twenty seconds to do tasks) a few days later. I found this web site and read some of the forums that all said a Task Killer would speed things up again. We installed Advanced Task Killer and the problem was solved.
Now I read this thread. Did the 2.0.1 update solve the problem of apps slowing the phone or was our success in fixing my son's phone a coincidence?
Now I read this thread. Did the 2.0.1 update solve the problem of apps slowing the phone or was our success in fixing my son's phone a coincidence?
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