[Nexus 5 Original Android Development] akash3656:
In an ideal world, you don't have apps which don't hold excessive or any wakelocks in the background. Such as the SMS app, calendar, dialer, people app, your launcher. If you constantly kill essential apps like those, it takes time to relaunch the app every time you kill and re-access the app.

Like an example would be if you need to call people frequently throughout the day. Are you going to kill the dialer/people app manually each time after you place a call? Note that launching dialer/people after killing them has a slight delay. One can argue the delay is non existent on the N5.

In reality, we have lousy apps which hold tons of wakelocks, namely Google Search, G+ and even Google Play Services. Now, there was a time 3rd party apps wrecked havoc with wakelocks, (almost) every app (that I use) fixed those. Now what's left is Google to fix their derp. Hopefully Project Volta can tame all these wakelocks from Google's own apps.

So if you use Greenify to keep those lousy apps from draining battery, you're doing it right. If you manually kill them (especially those with services), they'll end up restarting again. An example is WhatsApp, you kill the app, it will respawn. But if you greenify WhatsApp it won't relaunch/respawn unless if you manually launch it. But hey don't greenify WhatsApp, it's an app that doesn't abuse wakelocks.

Its a mess with wakelocks, but this comes at the cost of 'true-multitasking'. Hope Volta ends up bringing the standby time of the iOS without its restrictions. Because that's what it sounds like with the new JobScheduler API.

In short, you're doing it right if you use greenify to keep those problematic apps from raping battery. Or even to kill a game once your done playing as some games hold a wakelock until they are killed.

---------- Post added at 01:11 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:08 AM ----------

I've used that app before. I realize though it doesn't clean up the RAM used by systemUI and Android OS processes. So, a full reboot is sometimes what we need when Android leaks RAM.

Remember the 4.2.x RAM leaks on the GNex?

If the OS and system processes doesn't leak RAM, I leave it to the LMK to kill apps for me :)

---------- Post added at 01:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:11 AM ----------

Yes in some ways in contradicting myself but once in a while I'll kill one apps that hogs a lot of my RAM. Usually it ends up being Tint Browser/Opera/Chrome.

And when I do kill the browser (with 10-30 tabs opened), the phone magically feels a little smoother. Maybe placebo. I don't know. But usually I don't kill my browser as I do not want to see my tabs reload.

---------- Post added at 01:20 AM ---------- Previous post was at 01:15 AM ----------

Ugh I don't know how to say it.... But iPhones also have a similar caching mechanism when you leave an app. It doesn't kill the background app. But background apps have (very) limited ability to process anything in the background. Just push notification, playing music and some other simple things. Android folks call this 'fake multitasking'. It ends up indirectly solving the wakelock problem though.

The system will clear out apps used my cached background apps when memory is low. Very similar to the LMK in Android frankly.

To reply to you directly though, yes you seem to use your phone like those iPhone owners :D