[Motorola Droid RAZR] Ohmster:
QUESTION: How to tame Android?

Group Question: How to Tame the current state Android?

Or, how do we win "The War of the Apps"?​

...yes, another "Ohmster Book". I am sorry but this is an ongoing, very serious issue and we all need help with it.​

Preface:

A Motorola Droid XT910 or XT912 is not a new phone. As a matter of fact, this phone has probably outlived almost any other smartphone on the market that I know of. And we can thank CyanogenMod and Google's Kit Kat for preserving our beloved devices. Sure, I want the next best phone out there, but who has the money for it? Jellybean was a nice improvement over Ice Cream Sandwich, which was a HUGE improvement over Gingerbread. Jellybean did not really introduce a lot of new features or UI differences, it just greased the wheels and made everything run a lot smoother. Then the same old story. Apps get bigger, bloated, never know when to shup up and stop running. Precious memory is running very low, CPU load is so high and memory so low that the phones became obsolete, thanks to the ever growing appetite of the apps and the app market. Then when all seemed lost, along comes Kit Kat and I found it in cm11. WOW! Never mind grease, this OS upgrade put wings and jet engines on the phone and made it "Rocket Powered".

The Issue

But then, the "App War" geared up for a big fight. The apps are not going down easily. What am I talking about? Running apps that have no business running at all unless I have a need for them. Now that irks the, ...er, ...uh, ...well "you know", out of me! :mad:

Just open /Settings/Apps/Running and you will see what I mean. The phone is basically doing "nothing", it is sitting there, waiting patiently for me to make a call, run an app, or receive a call. It shouldn't be doing anything else other than light housekeeping. Currently I am using Greenify (Helps a LOT) and Boot Manager Xposed module to stop apps from starting at boot time. But that is of little help, these insidious creatures respawn like zombies from the dead. Since I have been killing apps and trying to trim things, I will reboot, give a few minutes to settle in and get my signal bars right, then I will look at running apps again...

...Alright, freshly booted, haven't done a thing with the phone, and am now in settings/apps/running now and am appalled at what I see. Here are a couple of screenshots of running apps and it will get

much worse

than this as time goes by.

I see things like this in running apps. Eating up my precious memory, my CPU cycles, and are slowing down my phone so much that I now have to wait for the phone with almost everything I do. Common items are:

TuneIn Radio

Slacker Radio

Pandora

Facebook

Digital Alarm Clock

Go SMS Pro Emoji (emoticons) Plugin

Who's Call caller ID app

Scanner Radio

AdAway

All Cloud drives. (Necessary for sync and auto photo uploads.)

And this list grows and gets pretty darned long sometimes. The two screenshots I sent now are not too bad. But remember, I have done nothing with the phone other than to reboot it minutes ago. Why is Slacker Radio running? I have not opened it and I am not listening to any music, nor did I open the app since rebooting the device. Whoscall, caller ID service, should run when phone rings. I have received nor made any phone calls. Dash Notifier? I am not positive what that is, I think it is part of DashClock, the thing that populates our CMHOME screen. This is not the DashClock, but a notifier that is supposed to run if triggered and then start whatever app is assigned. I have never used it nor have I set it up. Time to uninstall it.

Okay, a lot of the stuff are necessary services and I am not sure what they are so I do not mess with them. Things like com.whateverwhateverwhatever. Who even knows what these things are? I have tried Task Managers, Task Killers, Boot Managers, Xposed modules that do things like this, and of course, Greenify. The only one out of the bunch that makes a significant impact is Greenify, the donation version.

The Question:

Many people come here looking for answers and to learn things. Many Senior members run the Help Desk and know a great many tweaks and tips. My Question from myself and the scads of others out there wondering the same thing is: What measures do you guys use and what methods do you employ to keep running apps under control? Please take some time on answering this one, we all need to know this stuff. Do you uninstall things? Freeze things? Greenify things? Use Task Managers and Task Killers to kill all non-essential apps every so many minutes? Employ Profiles to have a "Scorched Earth" phone when you need speed and a Swiss Army Knife when you need one? What do you do to keep up the speed and keep down the riff-raff?

Points to Ponder:

Now really, why is Pandora running when I am not listening to it, have not opened the app, and have not opened the app for a month? Same for Slacker, TuneIn, and Scanner Radio? What reason are they running and what starts them up and respawns them when you kill them with a task killer or the app setting itself? Why is the third party caller ID running when the phone has not rang or been in use since booting up? Why is my SMS program emoticon plugin running when I have not sent nor received any text messages at all since booting up. The actual SMS program itself is not running, but the emoticon plugin is. I could go on and one but I think you all get the picture.

Two of "the worst offenders" were games that had no "Exit" button or menu. "Let's Golf 3" (Gorgeous Graphics with a rotten "pay 2 play" policy built in.) and "7 Slots" Seriously, no Exit or way out or to stop the game. The only way out was to hit the Home button on your device. That got rid of the UI, but "the game" or whatever insidious PUP it is still runs, eats your memory, steals your CPU cycles, and worse, has permission rights to your contacts and internet connection! If you killed it dead in settings/apps or used a task killer, like a zombie in the night, it woke right back up the moment your back was turned to continue, "doing whatever it is doing", without your knowledge or consent. Like it or not.

Now, what can we do to stop this, minimize background apps from running when they are not needed, are not being used, or have not been opened?

Taking all replies, suggestions, tips, practices, or whatever you got to combat "The War of the Apps". Gosh, it sounds like we are fighting "The War of the Worlds", doesn't it? :p

People please, give me, give us, your ideas and strategies! Thank you, thank you all. Together, we can win this fight! :good:

...off my soapbox now. Really sorry for taking so much of your time but I am fed up with this and I want some suggestions, answers, anything you got. For me and for my fellow thread members.