Android 2.1 - Task Manager - Is one required?

[Guest JohnPorter]

Hi All,

Got the Hungarian ROM installed on my Pulse and it's working beautifully.

On 1.5 I was using ES Task Manager, do we need to use a Task Manager in 2.1 or is it not required?

[Guest igor_anta]

Hi All,

Got the Hungarian ROM installed on my Pulse and it's working beautifully.

On 1.5 I was using ES Task Manager, do we need to use a Task Manager in 2.1 or is it not required?

Always:) It's the first most important thing to install (unless you're not referring to a task killer, in which case ignore me).

Cheers!

[Guest chote]

Which one will you suggest Igor?

[Guest igor_anta]

Which one will you suggest Igor?

Advanced Task Killer, free from market. Or Advanced Task Manager, but it's a paid app. Cheers!

*Ovaa vtorava ke se pomacis da ja najdes na net nekade, mene mi e bolje.

[Guest Rem1x]

Task Manager by Futon Redemtion.

Sweet UI and Widgets :(

[Guest goce.nakov]

Advanced Task Killer, free from market. Or Advanced Task Manager, but it's a paid app. Cheers!

*Ovaa vtorava ke se pomacis da ja najdes na net nekade, mene mi e bolje.

But Advance task Killer need root access to work right......as I remember???

[Guest igor_anta]

But Advance task Killer need root access to work right......as I remember???

Nope, Autokiller does. Cheers!

[Guest dodge-167]

Im using TasKiller....

[Guest Stevos]

If you are a normal user running a properly working version of Android you shouldn't need a task manager.

Processes and memory usage are managed by the system using a rather clever management system, and killing tasks manually could cause problems.

[Guest quincy456]

i keep reading that "Android is a smart os" , SO it doesnt need a task killer.

I think it's useful if only as it stops thing using web when not needed.

A app like say, sky news (no widget used) if you go back to the home screen is it always updating or only when you are looking at the app?

for expample:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Android-OS-Task-Ki...or-placebo-only

[Guest]

I use TaskPanel, but I can recommend (as well as TaskPanel) Advanced Task Killer, TasKiller.

Whatever takes your fancy I guess :(

[Guest Stevos]

i keep reading that "Android is a smart os" , SO it doesnt need a task killer.

I think it's useful if only as it stops thing using web when not needed.

A app like say, sky news (no widget used) if you go back to the home screen is it always updating or only when you are looking at the app?

for expample:

http://hubpages.com/hub/Android-OS-Task-Ki...or-placebo-only

Android keeps apps around in memory if they are likely to be needed again soon, which means available memory can go down as you run and exit software, but this is a good thing. Empty memory is wasted memory, and it will be cleared when needed for other apps.

In terms of process usage, software can continue to run after apparently exiting if elements of it run as a service (rather than as a visible screen.) Android will often close down services under certain circumstances to save power, and free resources. The only way for an app to (mainly) avoid this is to mark the service as foreground, which shows up an icon in the notification system to show the user that something's permanently running (like when the device is hooked up to USB and the icon remains in the notification area even when notifications are cleared.) Even services marked as foreground can be killed and removed by the system if another task requires resources.

Badly written apps can cause problems with battery life by running code that wakes up and runs under specific times and circumstances, however using a task managed to kill these will not reliably prevent them from running again, and they should be uninstalled if the benefit of using them is outweighed by the decreased battery life, and they can't eb configured to run less often etc. Task managers may be helpful to IDENTIFY which software is running badly, but they shouldn't (IMO) be used as a way to solve this problem (Eg. killing processes that the system expects to be running can cause problems with scheduled tasks and synchornisation - problems have been reported with alarms going at the wrong time due to this.)

This is my understanding of the situation from my app development and from reading around the subject.

Edited May 29, 2010 by Stevos

[Guest JohnPorter]

I must say that I've heard that before. I'm going to try it without one for now and see how it goes.

Used it on 1.5 because I didn't want my phone auto syncing all the time and getting notification from Facebook, but have now realised you can turn these feature off.

[Guest Stevos]

I must say that I've heard that before. I'm going to try it without one for now and see how it goes.

Used it on 1.5 because I didn't want my phone auto syncing all the time and getting notification from Facebook, but have now realised you can turn these feature off.

Give it a go and report back. My experience is that one isn't required for general use. Being able to kill processes on demand DOES give more fine grained control over the system, that in the hands of an expert could potentially increase performance (at the risk of causing instabillity), but it's not like this is something that the platform really needs that is missing from it. Google wouldn't engineer an entire OS framework with a custom UI and VMs, just to ignore a basic feature requirement of multitasking, it would be crazy.

The aim of the OS working as it does is to make sure that in general users don't need to worry about task management. It's not perfect by any means (and can be badly optimised or tweaked by particular phone manufacturers / ROMS setting the tolerances inappropriately for the amount of resources available on the hardware), but it is functional and quite effective by design.

Buggy and badly written software will always hurt performance, but a task manager isn't really a solution to this - avoiding and uninstalling bad software is (check reviews and popularity), as is configuring software to run as desired.

Seems like they need to communicate this better with users, to cut down on people (ie uninformed public) installing unnecessary stuff and then breaking things by over-optimising and tweaking their system.

Edited May 29, 2010 by Stevos