[Android General] stempox:
What is Android exactly?

Android is a multitasking operating system, and has been designed from the outset as a system where there was the need of having to close applications. Yes, Google engineers have deliberately made sure that the applications did not need to be closed, and that was the system itself decides when and why close them.

If you look at all applications developed for Android by Google, none of them has a key "exit" to exit, this is because Android is a system designed thinking of the many activities that a normal user plays with the smartphone every day and based on This was done so that the system can efficiently manage the switch from one application to another, from one service to another, without burdening the user decide when, how and why close an application, Imagine what you would normally do , call a friend, send a text message, reply to an e-mail, take a peek at Facebook, news, or give an eye to the weather. There districhiamo between myriads of applications, and the system makes sure as far as possible, to keep in memory all the applications that use repeatedly, either because they will be much faster ripescarle from RAM, rather than from the external memory, either because ripescarle from RAM and not reopen them from scratch, you consume less battery power and processor clock cycles.

This means that Android, inside, has his task killer (yes) and that has precisely the task of managing the best processes and applications, to understand when it's time to close those less useful. But ... the question arises, there is a difference between process and application?

The answer is obviously yes, and now let's see what they are and what they do.

What is the process?

A process is an activity that can be performed by one or more applications. When you think of an application you think of something, such as listening to music, send a Facebook message or synchronize your rss feed,

these processes are rather

Because they are the actions that the application triggers to perform its task. However, it is important to note that just because there is a process in memory, with no known function, does not mean that this process is redundant or not doing anything. In fact, the processes can be in a state of inactivity or active.

What is an application?

An application is something that makes use of many different processes to provide some functionality. For example, applications for Facebook and Twitter, or GPS navigators, or even games etc.. etc. ..

An application can be active or inactive, depending on whether it has all the active processes or not currently associated with it.

When we ship an application, the system allows him to keep his job running in the background (true multitasking), allowing it to continue to do its job.

For example, continue to download emails or listen to music, or download a web page. However, just because the applications leave processes "running" in the background, does not mean that these are not really doing anything or are unnecessary. They are kept in memory if you plan to reuse them again soon. Many people think that this generates an unnecessary battery consumption, but this is not true.

The footprint of an application "inactive" at a given time in memory uses exactly the same amount of battery as it would be if that portion of memory would be free.

What happens if the memory is too low?

We said that Android has its own internal task killer and is smart enough to recognize when you are running out of available memory, in the case will start to close all applications that are low priority for him.

The way it determines the priority we shall see shortly, but in a nutshell means that applications that use less or that are not critical for the phone will be closed first. The latest to be closed, but will be applications that are currently in the foreground, and are therefore critical applications, such as the alarm.

When Android closes applications to free memory, as I said before, he does so very clever because the next time you reopen an application closed, causes to be restored, as if it had never been closed (this is what IOS currently called multitasking, but in reality is only a freezare the application).

So this means that the application of "killing tasks" that are springing up in the market, they only interfere substantially throughout this administration, also creates potential problems of instability and poor performance of the terminal.

So let's see, before continuing to debunk the stereotypes that affect Task Killer

1) The Task Killer make my terminal faster -

FALSE

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In contrast, task killer makes the system potentially unstable and jerky. Processes kill indiscriminately is harmful, because maybe you can kill processes shared among multiple applications, and this means that the system is forced to re-open applications constantly, to reopen the process shared, and groped to restore the kill maybe just brutal while the task was doing an activity. And this can generate crash or lag that we think will result from the applications themselves, and instead we create all this ...

2) The Task Killer lengthen battery life -

FALSE

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The Task Killer when they do exactly the opposite ... reduce the battery life!

When an application is freed killa that window of memory occupied, but almost certainly immediately after the re-open, or when the re-open, it will happen that instead of fetch it out again from the RAM, will reopen from zero and this generates more work to the system and to the terminal that it will use up more energy. Since I uninstalled Automatic Task Killer, I have to admit a longer battery life, because before ATK was always pretty nice to them to kill everything in memory and Android reopened shortly after 80% of what moments before had been closed ... This is just the beat and Ribatti antibatteria for excellence ...

3) Using a Task Killer because I do not have the exit button in the application -

FALSE

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There is no exit button, because Android is designed to prevent the user from the need to close applications. If an application needs to be closed, the Android will be when the time comes.

4) But then the Task Killer does not need to own anything? -

FALSE

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The applications developed for Android does not have any programming model, poorly developed some applications may generate system instability and prevent proper operation of the terminal. In this case it may be useful to kill one such application that generates problems to recover the situation and uninstall. In this case, use the Task Killer manual, which allow you to decide when and why kill such an application or process.