yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Vibrant General] Chalup:
When people say auto task killers improved performance, they never backup such claims with any sort of data. Of course one can use theory to support such a claim; however, the problem still remains that "I definitely noticed a performance increase" is purely subjective. There is a reason that drugs must undergo double blind studies as part of the approval process, and that non fda-evaluated, so-called "natural" drugs are a scam.

The only argument for auto task killers that may hold any water is that, on older devices with less memory, they help prevent automatic garbage collection by the OS. However, is the task killer not simply replacing the OS memory management, but in a less efficient manner by prematurely freeing memory that may not even be needed anytime soon?

As for reducing the CPU load, here is how I look at it. A service automatically starts for whatever reason, in the process requesting memory and sending processes to the CPU. The auto task killer, itself a service, then uses system resources to kill the service. This service has likely overridden the appropriate methods to save its state and any necessary persistent data when killed. Thus by killing it, one is simply prematurely doing what will inevitably be done by the OS when and if the need arises. Furthermore, the killed service will likely start again soon, especially if what the user is running is what caused the service to start.

In conclusion, it makes more sense to

1) uninstall unnecessary apps that run as automatic services

2) Somehow deny services from ever being started, e.g. with autostarts. This can be dangerous, for one may accidentally disable a service upon which a number of core functionalities rely in order to operate correctly. In other words, there could be unintentional side effects.
[Vibrant General] dan0zone:
What's wrong with leaving them open and letting the system do its job?

If the apps don't close like they should, why are you still using them?

Web , music, games, may not respond to the back button, because of their ability to use android's multitasking OS, eg: playing a game, get a phone call, resume the game after the call...

Web is a llittle different, but works with the same principles of multitasking, I Mich prefer to be able to open the browser and continue where I left off, than having to restart the session every time...

Hope this makes sense to you...
[Vibrant General] kangxi:
Because when you kill them, they will likely reopen, this time not being empty. Thus you are causing more harm then good. And I have over 40 apps on my phone and back works with all of them. Again, if you are using ATK or something similar it may show an app as open but it is just resting in your ram waiting to be reopened.

Edit: if an app does not close when passing back, something is wrong with that app. Again, ATK does not give you enough information and tell you what kind of state the app is in. Your empty apps will be purged when needed. Using autokiller can help make that more effective.
[Vibrant General] funeralthirst:
i know, nevermind what the people who wrote the os have to say about it, anecdotal 'i notice a performance increase using task killers' is much more persuasive... despite the lack of reasoning/facts for using task killers (hint: apps in memory is not bad in android, nor are they necessarily using cpu).
[Vibrant General] dan0zone:
Empty apps are empty for a reason buddy, they are empty....

All it means is that it was opened at one time, either by the user or system and now its in idle mode( empty) till its called upon again , if the system needs more resources for eg, a game, then the empty app is the first to go...

Like another member said, if an app is causing issues then get rid of it...
[Vibrant General] CitrixLemon:
I am talking about apps like Web, Music, Games, I will agree that things will show up in ATK that are not actually slowing the phone down very much. That said there are some apps which remain open and take up memory and processing power, things like games, web and other apps that save your place so you can multi-task. When I'm done multi-tasking I like to have a quick way to kill all of these apps without having to manually go into each app and back out of it. That's why I use a Task Killer and why I recommend them to everyone.
[Vibrant General] kangxi:
Are you agreeing with me or what? Because I basically said the same thing....
[Vibrant General] Kubernetes:
Here I took two screens at the same time to show how much the J16 manager leaves out..

The JI6 Task Manager is clearly superior here. Why? Because it shows the CPU usage of each active app. The point of a task manager/killer should be to help you identify runaway apps that are sucking up CPU cycles for no reason. ATK helps you kill any app in memory, but it doesn't help you identify which app to kill.

An Android phone is not like your desktop PC. There's no reason you need to have as much free RAM as possible--your phone doesn't need that kind of overhead to do work. As I mentioned before, I've never dropped below 60 megs free, which, from reading G1 forums, is a comfortably massive amount of free memory. And having your most used apps resident but idle is a good thing. It doesn't use any resources and the apps can launch much quicker when you need them. Android is doing this for a reason, so unless an app is actively using CPU when you don't want it to, leave the apps alone.
[Vibrant General] reuthermonkey:
Since it's obvious that task-killer supporters don't understand how Android manages memory, have a read from an Android Software Engineer

http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/04/multitasking-android-way.html

Anything a task-killer does, Android does on its own.

Except that Android does it more efficiently.
[Vibrant General] mmas0n:
This is what I started doing recently. Uninstall crap you don't want (duh), then spend the $1 on Autostarts from the Market. Tweak whatever you want in Autostarts, then let Android handle the rest. I have a separate task manager installed just for piece of mind. I start it occasionally, and hey guess what, nothing in there that I don't want because Autostarts works and Android is awesome.
[Vibrant General] kangxi:
Exactly. The only time a task manager is remotely useful is to close badly programmed apps. But then again, why would you be using badly programmed apps? Thus, no point. You can argue this all you want, the facts state that you are wrong and any perceived performance increases are just a temporary high basically.
[Vibrant General] d01100100:
Empty applications resident in memory are like books in a bookshelf.

Maybe some people are OCD and like to close the book and put it neatly back into the bookshelf when they're done with them. Android isn't like that. Android is like the messy college kid that leaves the books on the desk. Sometimes they're open (still running), and sometimes they're closed (empty with a bookmark in place). There's only so much desk real estate so when you need larger book, you'll need go through the hassle of clearing off space on the desk, but only when required.

Running a task killer is like being OCD about your desk space. Not required, but hey, it's your phone.
[Vibrant General] reuthermonkey:
What you're describing is more like how windows handles memory.

You open up a book, and when you're done, it throws them randomly all over the floor. Sometimes when you go looking for books, you step on the other ones and rip out the pages, forcing you to get rid of it and purchase a new book.

Running a task killer is more akin to you burning a book when you're done with it for the day, and then re-purchasing it every time you want to read it.

Android, otoh, files the book away in your house so you can easily find it again, and only burns the book if you run out of space in your home.
[Vibrant General] dan0zone:
Show me your logcat that proves this...

I wanna see a logcat the shows the empty app that you claim is using memory and processing power..

Most games have an exit option , if a game does not fully release the resources that it was using after you close it, then that's the dev's fault not the OS.. You should uninstall and report it to them...

Once you hit pause on music players they go into Hibernate ....

Some websites sucks so I make a habit of going to google.com before I hit the home button...
[Vibrant General] dan0zone:
sorry I think I quoted the wrong person.. But yes I do agree with you..
[Vibrant General] kangxi:
Ok. I was just confused lol.
[Vibrant General] ags29:
So I see that a big argument against the use of task killers is that they're supposedly memory hogs. I unplugged my phone this morning at 7:30a when I left for school. I used it on the train back and forth for music, on top of playing Angry Birds, browsing the web, looking for a Hale and Hearty's on Google Maps, etc.. All in all, I clicked on the Advanced Task Manager widget a total of 3 times to end all running apps/services throughout the day. It is now 8:45p and I still have 29% of my battery left. Whatever amount of battery the task manager used up seems fine to me as I'm still left with a decent percentage of battery if you ask me.

So basically, "the task managers use up your battery" argument is pretty pointless and baseless to me.. And the only other argument I really see within all these threads is that "android is built to handle task managing on it's own". In response to that I simply say, "Yea, but if you can help it out every now and then - then why not?" (I've never had a problem killing system apps even. Apparently, when they're needed, they just start instantly, as does anything else I might've killed and then need). Also, as many users have clearly attested, sometimes the system just lags, and ending a few apps that the system hasn't already ended helps speed things up.

But I see, however, that many of you clearly won't accept the fact that using a task killer might actually be helpful at times, and that's fine too.
[Vibrant General] Kubernetes:
Your recounting your battery history tells us nothing. Yesterday I was up 18 hours and 25% when I switched out batteries. And I used no task killer, so clearly that means my method is better, right?

If you're fine with the results you're getting, that's cool, but the overwhelming weight of opinion by "experts," including Google, Cyanogen, etc., say task killing is pointless and actually hurts battery.

So I see that a big argument against the use of task killers is that they're supposedly memory hogs.

No, I don't think that's the crux of the argument. The argument is that task killers do something that Android already does, and may end up doing things that actually worsen your experience. ATK doesn't even show the CPU load of the apps you're killing, so you may be killing idle apps that Android may decide to reload down the road. When you used ATK today, did you end up killing apps that you had shut down earlier but had subsequently reloaded on their own?
[Vibrant General] PaiPiePia:
I know benchmark are not good indicator of real world performance but if you start a lot of programs and look at the task manager, you will see bunch of RAM used but NO CPU usage.

Now run a benchmark like Linkpack you get 7.4 ~ 7.6. End all running Application, you will get 8.0 ~ 8.03, so it does impact performance on a benchmark level, but I don't think you will notice it in real world use.
[Vibrant General] ultra spikey:
Maybe a stock Android OS with no apps on it probably will not benefit from a task killer, but once you start loading it up with random apps/games, it only makes sense that a task killer will help. Not all apps shut down when you exit them. Some apps could be sending/recieving data in the background. Sketch Online is just one app that comes up right off the top of my head that does not close.

And then you have those apps that just start for no reason. Depending on what they are, they could be consuming resources.
[Vibrant General] N8ter:
The Web Browser should have an Exit menu option. Even at google.com it uses up 12MB or more of RAM, and on some pages it can use as much as 25-30MB.

I always close the browser with the Task Manager. At Google or whatever. It's a huge waste of resources to leave it running.

EDIT: Also wanted to add. Yes, the platform is supposedly managing the memory, but if you get to the point where the OS actually has to start shutting stuff down, performance has already started degrading to levels where a reboot is needed, anyways. This is an issue inherent in app-centric mobile OSes and it's part of the reasons why Microsoft chose a different approach and Apple has held off on Multi-Tasking for so long.

It's not like Windows Mobile didn't have these same issues for almost a decade before Android, and it's almost always come with its own Task Manager as part of the OS.

These Auto-Task Killers are a clunky workaround for this, and generally do more harm than good.

Emphasis mine.
[Vibrant General] reuthermonkey:
No. No it doesn't "only make sense". On Windows 95? Sure. On WinMo? Absolutely. On Android, no.

The only case where it makes sense to use a task-killer is if you're using poorly coded apps. In that case, you should probably uninstall and write a poor review anyways. Because if you keep it installed, you're just wasting cpu cycles and battery letting that crappy app reboot and get killed over and over and over and over and over and over again.

An app doesn't get launched unless something calls for it. Either that app is scheduled to launch via a system service, or it's called by another app (very rare). If the app keeps launching itself that you disagree with, again, it's probably poorly coded.

I have 94 apps installed right now - not including system apps that came with my phone.

Now here are all of my running services:

Android Core (system)

DRM protected content storage (system)

Google Talk Service (system)

SNS (system)

Swype

Google Voice

Device Management Service (system)

Touchdown Exchange (for background exchange sync)

SetCPU Widget

Slacker Radio Service (for background music)

Google Listen Service (for background podcasts)

Facebook Service

NetCounter (to count how much data I transfer)

Those are the only services that are actually USING cpu cycles. At a 100mhz, low voltage clock speed by the way.

Additionally, there are 4 more backgrounded services that aren't using a single cpu cycle, and are waiting until they are either called or killed by Android to use the memory elsewhere.

Unlike Windows, Android is designed to actually make use of available memory. Having 120MB of temporarily "free" memory doesn't benefit Android. It just forces the system to relaunch all of the services that you killed. And they'll spike your CPU to 1ghz while it's working on launching all of the apps before it will tick back down to 100mhz when the apps idle.

I don't see a single thing in my list that shouldn't be there. So maybe that's why I tend to agree with the Android development team that Android manages apps quite well on its own.
[Vibrant General] ags29:
Yea, it does.. But eventually it WILL lag (and that's expected). So when it does, using the task killer will clear out some things and use some cpu to do it (duh), and it might affect the battery (duh), but as a result..

And here it is folks..

Your phone will run FASTER!! (Ok, you're right that this isn't a fact. I'm basing this off my experience with the Vibrant and my Nexus One.. But you be the judge.)

...and that's the whole point you're missing.
[Vibrant General] reuthermonkey:
And you base this off what?

I've used task killers on my G1 and on my Vibrant. The G1 has less RAM and is a much slower phone, so any kind of speed increase would be great, right?

What I noticed, and what became the general consensus over in that forum was: Task Killers temporarily help, then cause worse lag than you started out with. Then, as your phone begins lagging again because it's restarting all of those killed servics, you run the task killer even more frequently than before.

So - to me - if people using MUCH slower phones with a LOT less RAM are saying that task-killers are little more than temporary fixes, and typically just placebos, then i'm gonna guess my 1.2ghz Vibrant with three times the RAM is going to be fine.
[Vibrant General] dan0zone:
"The Web Browser should have an Exit menu

option . Even at google .com it uses up 12MB or

more of RAM, and on some pages it can use as

much as 25- 30MB "

I hope that you understand those numbers represent virtual RAM... and that adds to my point...

Those task killers get their readings from the virtual system not the system it self, this is what those devs. are not telling users , and hence the reason they don't show the CPU usage...

It seems that most of the users that argue how good task killers are for them either had terrible experiences with Windows mobile or just don't fully understand how android works.

I think Samsung had the right idea , if the unknowing user is going to use a task killer, then, they should use the one made by Samsung.. and not a 3rd party app that's gonna lead them down the wrong road..
[Vibrant General] reuthermonkey:
Here's more information about why Task-killers got popular, and why they're currently pretty useless.

It includes tweets by Cyanogen elaborating on the counter-productivity of task killers:

http://androinica.com/2010/05/07/go...-imply-task-killermanager-apps-are-pointless/
[Vibrant General] CitrixLemon:
Had you read the original post completely you would have seen that I was talking about two different things. I said I agreed that there are times when Android holds onto apps but they can be considered "empty" for all intents and purposes. There are also apps which I like to keep running in the background so that I can resume using them later. For instance Angry Birds can be exited but then re-opened and you can resume playing. I contend that having Angry Birds open in this behind the scenes state requires memory. So imagine that but with a lot of apps/games. I like to have a way to close them all at once. Perhaps you think Angry Birds is a faulty app and I should uninstall it and report it to the developers?
[Vibrant General] Kubernetes:
What difference does it make that apps stay in RAM if they're in idle mode? Again, have you ever run into a low memory situation?

Just for kicks I opened a bunch of apps without closing properly. Task manager shows the following apps:

NYTimes

Angry Birds

QuickDesk

Launcher Pro Plus

Opera Mini

MixZing

Dolphin HD

GPS Test

Free RAM: 66MB.

I also run an metric ass-ton of widgets. It's fun to see some massive number in the Free RAM column, but what does it gain you? If it's performance, I don't see it. I'm running lag free with Bionix 1.8, get awesome battery life, and I don't use a task killer.

/edit

Just as I was typing this, Android's Task Manager just shut down NYTimes. I didn't manually kill it, but apparently the OS was smart enough to do it since I hadn't looked at it in 3 hours. See, the OS works!
[Vibrant General] mr2t32:
Taskiller is not needed for the vibrant IMO. I actually like having my apps stay im mem especially the ones that i use often. It opens faster than if i would to kill it. I haven't run into a problem where my phone will lag so much that i needed to kill apps manually. I know on the myTouch that i had, it's something that i needed to do especially with the custom 2.1 roms.

It's just up to the individual preference. If you are anal about the free memory and the processes, you will want to use it. If you are fine with the way you're phone is, you will not need it.
[Vibrant General] N8ter:
You experiences are noted.

But...

Who the hell are you, anyways?

Steve Jobs?
[Vibrant General] N8ter:
Yes, and virtual memory is not unlimited, which is why it can lead to problems.

Remember Windows XP on low RAM Systems "Your System is low on Virtual memory, please close applications or reboot you system."

The fact that the OS manages applications in the background doesn't make it infaliable.

If you're running a push messaging application and you haven't recieved a message in 6 hours the OS may close it down, even though you definitely don't want that application closing down. There are other less obvious examples, but I hope that gets the point across.

Most apps on the marketplace are uber useless anyways, and there aren't really that many apps worth installing onto a smartphone. I don't see the point in having 90 apps on a phone because there's no way anyone consistently uses even 30% of those apps.

The task managers are just generally not much of a benefit, if any.

A Windows CE-type task manager is all that's needed. To kill rogue apps and end those that do not give you an exit menu (like the Android Browser). That's basically what Samsung added in JI6.
[Vibrant General] ags29:
So after using eugene's new froyo rom, I am speechless about how smoothly the phone ran through my little "stress test." Like seriously, there was was zero lag. I opened up a whole bunch of apps and left them running in the background without closing them and after every couple, I would go back to previous ones I left open to find that they were indeed closed.

Froyo seems to be where multitasking finally seems to be implemented efficiently enough to eliminate lag and the need for a task killer, but on 2.1 it's still handy.
[Vibrant General] mmas0n:
It was my understanding that Google felt strongly enough that task killers were the bane of Android that they simply do not work in Froyo. 3rd party apps no longer have the ability to kill other apps, at least not through the methods that developers had been using to date.
[Vibrant General] Chalup:
Ugh I couldn't resist responding. Angry Birds does NOT stay running in the background. Go to developer.android.com and read the explanation of the life cycle of activities. If you actually read it (probably won't) and are able to understand (unlikely) what it means for task killers, then you will realize what is wrong with your post.
[Vibrant General] reuthermonkey:
Android isn't Windows.

I don't really know if this can be emphasized enough.

Android isn't Windows.

If an Android push messaging app is properly coded, the service will ALWAYS wait in the background. If Android closes it because it's out of RAM, it will restart it once RAM frees up.

Please read the links posted in this thread, instead of making assumptions based upon experiences with other OSes.

Android isn't Windows.
[Vibrant General] dan0zone:
First up

Your messaging app is considered a system app on these phones,

Second

android will never kill off system apps before first then 3rd party after... the OS wasn't designed that way..

Third

All these word of mouth things that some of you keep regurgitating in these forums is pointless... all its doing is confusing new users ( like you was when you first started) when they do their research on weather they should or shouldn't..

I keep asking for proof to support what you guys are saying , proof has been shown to you guys that says you're wrong, Google says you're wrong all the top devs say your wrong. but for some reason you guys still think you're right....

Hey to each his own, I guess... and I'm ok with that, use it if you want to, BUT, Please Don't Encourage New Users to get into this task/app killer crap...... PLEASE..

It's annoying when you're trying to help someone to fix something on their phone, only to find out 2 hrs later that they had that crap on there killing the processes that we were trying to fix. ... ....