Things I've never used in my life - but closed countless times - are constantly open or running, presumably draining the short lived power time. I'd be happy to have a phone that works, I just can't believe the gap betwen the hype and the letdown of this phone or its OS, which maybe the whole problem, it's near worthless. It really does more to frustrate than it seems to give back in terms of beign a portable source of info. I say I almost wish I had a standard phone again, but what I'd really like is a smart phone that works, ( my carrier doesnt offer iPhones or I'd try that, the idea of open source or whatever these androids are supposed to have that's better than apples' is great, if you like being exposed to stuff that can hurt you and ruing your phone. ).
As a first-time Android user, you don't understand how Android works.
from Droid Den:
Understanding The Android Way
aka ?Android is not your Windows PC?
In order to understand why a task killer is not required with android, we must give an explanation about how android works, how it manages tasks, and indeed what a task actually is.
Android is a multitasking operating system, it was built from the ground up with the ethos of not having to kill tasks ground into its methodology. The designers intentionally left out a task killer and ways to close apps. Just think about this for a second. You gmail app is an app designed by google, but you don?t see a close button anywhere do you? In fact I bet a lot of people don?t know its even running (we will define ?running? later). Google did not want to burden the mobile user with having to close applications when they are ?done? with them. They decided to do this on the basis that a mobile user will repeatedly and briefly interact with a wide variety of applications throughout the day.
Think about your own usage for a minute, I know that this stands true for me, as it will 99.9% of you out there. We use our mobiles on and off, jumping from app to app. For instance, send sms, call friend, check facebook, play a game, make a note, check the weather, etc, etc. Sound familiar? It ought to, as mentioned this is how we use mobiles, and the list can literally go on an on and on.
Ok so we now understand why google decided not to include exit options, or task killer applications. But it?s going to take more than that to convince you right? Lets drop down a level and discuss what exactly happens when you leave (press home or back) an application. Within android applications, there are two fundamental things you should be aware of, an application, and a process. These two concepts are together what make up an application, and are key to understanding why a task killer is not required.
What Is a Process?
A process is an activity that can be performed by 1 or more applications. When you think of an application actually doing something, for example playing music, posting a message to facebook or syncing your rss feed, these are processes. However, it is important to note that just because a process exists, does not mean it may be actually; doing anything. If you like, it may be easier to say that processes may be in an idle or active state.
What Is an Application?
An application is something that makes use of many different processes to provide you with some wanted functionality. For example, the official facebook or twitter apps. An application may also be idle or active, depending if it has any active processes currently associated with it.
When you leave an application, that application is allowed to keep its process running in the background (true multitasking) allowing it to carry on doing whatever work it needs to do. For example continue to download the rest of a webpage or playing music. However, just because an application leaves processes ?running? in the background, does not mean they are actually doing anything at all. They are being kept in memory just in case you are going to use them again soon. Many people cite this as a battery drain, nothing could be further from the truth however. Storing a footprint of an application in memory uses exactly the same amount of battery as it would if that section of memory is free. If you continue to open applications, then more of your memory will be used.
Eventually there will be no memory left, time to use a task killer? No! Android is smart enough to recognise when it is running low on available memory, and will start to close those apps that it deems are low priority. The way it determines priority means that those apps you have used least, and are not core to the phone will be closed down first. This does not include apps that are currently in the foreground, or as mentioned core apps such as the clock alarm. 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 (this is similar to what iOS actually calls it?;s main multitasking, laughable I know).
The key point to take from the above is, that task killers are completely not required, and actually interfere with how the android os works under the hood.
I am well aware of this little trick. But here is the problem with it, as I recall:
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