HTC Droid Eris :: Memory Management - Task Killing?
Feb 22, 2010
Ok after seeing the somewhat heated threads on here about whether or not to use a task killer to help mange memory and improve performance on the droid Eris I decided to run my own little unscientific test.
So just a bit of background, Ive been in enterprise wide IT for 10 years now. I will say that my O/S knowledge is not exactly current but that may not be a bad thing for this. I will also state that what I report is just my own experience and I have not repeated is several times to validate anything. YMMV!
About four weeks ago my Eris was running like poo. Slow, lag city and getting almost unusable. I had been using Advanced Task killer quite liberally during this time trying to keep the device usable. Short term it seemed to help restore some of the response issues but it didnt take long before I was trying reboots to get the phone working well. Here is a list of apps I had installed at the time.
Pandora
Weather Bug
Shop Savy
Google Sky
Daily Dilbert
Bloom County
WiFi Analyzer
Silent Mode Toggle
Taskiller
SpareParts
battery Widget
Robot Guitarist
keyring reward
tv.com
NPR News
Movies
Shazam
Zedge
ip-calc
aldiko
JogTracker
UnitConverter
Backgrounds
photoshop mobile
plink art
Weather channel
Radar now
Last.fm
Plus a few others that had been removed.
That quite a few apps but not overboard in my book, and most seem to be pretty stable.
Anyway I decided to wipe the device and start over again, but with the debate raging I decided that I was not going to run any sort of task killer or other memory manager. And that I was going to run for at least four weeks and report the results. I will say I trimmed some of the redundant apps (weather bug replaced all the other weather apps nicely)
I have to say that over all I dont feel like I need a memory manager or task killer. It would be hard to say that the phone is a zippy as it was right after I wiped it, but as of now its no where near as laggy as it was before I wiped it. I feel my battery life is just fine, but I am not one who thinks that battery is an issue anyway. If there is 10% left when my head hits the pillow at night then I am a happy camper.
So this does beg the question what does using a memory manager really do for your experience on the phone? I cant for sure state that using a task killer caused my lag issues before, but it was not helping at the time either. My apps and usage have not changed very much other then not using a task killer and as of now my phone is running pretty darn well.
For me I am pretty firmly in the do-not-need-a-task-killer-camp for now. And before you flame or argue with me I challenge you to try it both ways for a while (with a clean wipe). I am sure that others have had a different experiences and maybe using one works for them.
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Apr 5, 2010
I set my screen to use HOME versus Sense UI. Well, I put the ATM widget on my screen for single click app ends...when I do this, though, it kills home.
Anyway I can exclude Home from this. It doesn't appear to be an option in my Apps list when i open Advanced Task Manager
I have YET to receive a single email from androidforums.com when I use "Instant Email Notification" for thread replies.
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Aug 5, 2010
Iv'e had nothing but weird problems since day one of my DroidX. I just received a DX hoping it was Hardware issue's (even though I was convinced it was software related). Everyone kept telling me it was because I rooted my droid, but I disagree.
Come to find out it was Advanced Task Killer causing my problems. I had it set to "Auto Kill" and set the level to "Crazy" and set it to "When Screen Turns Off".
It was killing my alarms, Killing Txt, VM, missed call Notifications, and restarting my phone because it was killing an important process....
IDK if anyone has already posted something about this (I didnt see anything) so I figured i'd throw it out there. Im still currently using ATK but the Auto Kill is turned off. Sending New DX back to Verizon.
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Aug 19, 2009
Our application is defined to launch a SplashScreenActivity from Intent { action=android.intent.action.MAIN categories= {android.intent.category.LAUNCHER} . After the SplashScreenActivity does its work, it launches another intent to launch MainMenuActivity and finish() is called on SplashScreenActivity.
When we run our app for the first time on our phone, the SplashScreenActivity launches OK, and correctly launches the MainMenuActivity.
However, if we kill the app using TaskKiller, LOGCAT indicates that the application has been killed. I can't debug the app, because launching it from eclipse with the debugger makes it work OK, because it reinstalls the app. Perhaps there is a way to launch the app without reinstalling it?
Here is the Log of us killing our app...
When we launch the application again, the LOG messages for SplashScreenActivity are not logged and it looks from LOGCAT that Android is launching the MainMenuActivity instead. Here is the log...
Can someone Romaine, Diane help us understand what is happening? We saw this happening because some variables are initialized in SplashScreenActivity that aren't available with MainMenuActivity and we were getting NPEs.
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Jun 4, 2010
I notice that Spare Parts came with a Task Management option. I was wondering if anyone has seen a conflict between using Spare Parts and AutoKiller which seems to have the same job except with more features?
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Feb 17, 2010
I am considering getting a Motorola Milestone, which should ship with Android 2.something.I have a Nokia, and I really like the multitasking of the Symbian environment. How is it going to be different with Android? Is it a true multitasking os like Symbian or is it not, like the iphone? How do I switch from one application to another? Is there a button which shows all running apps? I read comments that, on some phones, switching from the web browser to another app and then back to the browser causes the page to reload from scratch. Is this still true or was it a limitation of older versions? Is there a task killer? I read very contradicting opinions on this, but I must say I do not understand why I should leave open an app I don't need, and how much an app left open uses system resources (battery life and RAM): I would have thought that its impact on system performance might have been minimal, but still > 0, right? Then why not close it altogether? Or am I missing something here?
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Jul 29, 2010
I have tried 3 different task killers but each one do not seem to be killing the task even though it says it is. When i open the "killed" apps, they open to the last screen before they were killed. I am using the froyo ROM. On 2.1, when the apps were killed and then re-opened them, it always went back to the main screen.
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Dec 31, 2013
I downloaded advanced task killer and select all the extra apps that I want to stop running however I can clearly see from the status bar that the app is still running. Things like brightness slider and stuff. Greenify seemed to actually really work but since I'm not rooted I cannot use that anymore.
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Jul 30, 2010
My Alarm App. didn't operate because Adavanced task manager killed alarm app....
How can alarm avoid to kill process by task manager except including alarm into ignore list??
Or Can I hide alarm app. in killing list of task manager?
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Aug 11, 2012
I set my min free values on my phone so that it would be more aggressive in killing apps. But I don't want to kill juice defender when I hit kill all. Is there a way to make HTC task killer on sense 4 to avoid killing the app or setting juice defenders oom values lower?
HTC Sensation 4G
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Sep 7, 2010
ok so i click call apps and 2 secs later most of them are back,I just killed these and they are back within 2 secs and i have not even used them for atleast a day how can i kill them until i click to open and automatically close when i come out of any program
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Jun 1, 2010
I've been using a Task killer without problem since I got the Desire but since yesterday when reading through one of the threads on here and downloading a load of stuff the Task Killer has started behaving badly, I've tried two different Task Killers and they're both doing the same.
When killing some apps the screen seems to restart, like it killed the Sense UI but I've put all the system processes on the ignore list.
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Jul 1, 2010
I cannot figure out how to refresh a web site or facebook without killing the internet with a task killer. I can go back to the web or facebook hours after closing them and the same page comes up. Any tips for how to fix this?
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Dec 11, 2009
I know this was talked about before at different times but I still have 3 questions.
1. what is the difference between a task killer and a task manager?
2. should we be using one of these apps or not?
3. when you look at the awake time if it is like 70% or 80% and you aren't using the phone a bunch I take it that means something is running,how can you find what is running.and is the awake time that big of deal?
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Jan 15, 2010
I am working on an application for android and we since we have lots of graphics, we use a lot of memory.
I monitor the memory heap size and its about 3-4 Mb , and peeks of 5Mb when I do something that requires more memory (and then goes back to 3). This is not a big deal, but some other stuff is handled outside the heap memory, like loading of drawables.
For example if I run the ddms tool outside eclipse, and go to sysinfo, I see that my app is taking 20Mb on the Droid and 12 on the G1, but heap size are the same in both, because data is the same but images are different.
So the questions are: How do I know what is taking the memory outside the heap memory? What other stuff takes memory outside the heap memory? Complex layouts (big tree) ? Animations?
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Mar 1, 2010
I have a problem with my application, and it's about a Virtual memory error: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(19790): java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: bitmap size exceeds VM budget
The story is like this: I have an activity (let's call it A), the user click on a button from this activity, then i will make an api call somewhere in the internet, and after the result is back i start a subactivity (let's call it B).
In the activity B i have to dinamicaly load some images from the resources folder. I load the images into bitmaps -> drawables -> imageviews. After the user click's on some buttons i have to setResult(..), finish(), and get back to activity A.
The thing is that, goes from activity A to B, then B -> A, then A -> B for a few times, my app crashes with the message above: it doesn't have enough memory to load the interface.
I can not maintain the activity B on the stack because i don't want the user to go to this activity without going through activity A first.
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Nov 4, 2010
Running a rooted Evo (obviously) with OMJ 3.8. I have Sense running with Itching Thumb(which I love).
For about a month or so I have been using Autokiller Memory Optimizer which has improved me phone's performance (I determined this in a sisde by side comparison with my wife's unrooted evo. I know this is not a perfect test, but as OMJ uses a stock kernel it's close enough, IMHO)
Since I have been running Itching Thumb I have notices when switching apps Sense will occasionally get killed. I can only assume this is because of Autokiller.
When I looked on Autokiller Sense had an oom of 8, which with a memory use of 9mb and change makes it a candidate for being killed, I would assume. The oom for sense seems to bounce around a bit, it's usually 8, but I have seen 4 and 1 also.
This is a mild annoyance, waiting for Sense to restart, but if I could avoid it I'd like to. I've thought of a few possible fixes I would prefer not to do, which include:
Uninstalling Itching Thumb
Lowering the free memory threshhold on Autokiller
Temporarily lowering Sense's oom in Autokiller
What can I do to keep Sense from being killed? (I considered a bulletproof vest, but they didn't have one that fit) Can I lower it's oom? Any ideas? Or should I just suck it up and accept it and a byproduct of my tinkering?
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May 3, 2010
I've tried several different methods for getting one of my iTunes playlists moved to the Eris but I'm having a difficult time. I finally just dragged and dropped a bunch of music over but how do I organize that into a playlist? Do I have to do it from the Eris itself (which involves adding every single song, one by one)? I have tried mounting the SD card and creating a playlist folder under the main music folder but that doesn't seem to work. The playlist is already created on the Eris and I moved a few songs over for testing, but when the card is mounted to the PC I can't find how the playlist is stored.....am I making any sense? Sure hope so.
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Apr 18, 2010
Basically I was messing around and decided to check my battery usage because it seemed to have run down pretty fast lately, and i see this. Whenever i run my camera once this seems to happen. I always use the back button to back out of the camera after i use it and i've gone as far as ending all tasks using the system app. Is there any way to stop the camera from using so much of my battery, or should I just stop using it?
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Mar 1, 2010
Android doc say:"When the system, rather than the user, shuts down an activity to conserve memory, ... "
But how to simulate this situation?I want to debug the onRestoreInstanceState method,but don't know how to.
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Jan 29, 2010
I ripped my songs off cd's using windows media player, and I was just wondering why every song now plays on a loop. If I go into the music player and select by album or by artist and hit play, it just plays the one song on a loop-never advancing. I tried "play all" but it doesn't work.What im wondering is; What is the proper way to import songs? I either dragged whole albums, or selected multiple ones from my computer and dropped them into the music folder of the eris and it still plays only one song at a time. Of course I can hit the next arrow and it advances but it never does it on its own. What am I doing wrong?
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Nov 29, 2009
I'm used to my contacts being under a contacts setting/button/tangible thing. I had my contacts transferred into Google Contacts, which now sync to my phone. Is there a special way to have contacts actually on your SD card? Or do i just need to keep google sync on. I tried turning it off for battery purposes, but then all my contacts went away. I've set up HTC People, but I still don't know how to like just view my contacts, or quickly add a new person. Sorry if this is very newb, I just waited a really long time to get a smart phone, and the only one I've gotten to use has been an iPhone since i deal with them at work everyday.
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Dec 7, 2009
I installed it on my Droid and when I open the list and long press on an app it gives me the option to Auto-Kill. I assume this means I won't have to kill this app any longer so I select this option but I find that I keep having to kill the same apps over and over again. What's the point of Auto-Kill or what am I doing wrong? There are lots of programs (most I didn't even install) that run all the time and I'm having battery issues so I don't have battery to waste on programs I'm not using and will probably never use.
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Sep 29, 2010
Is there any difference between what happens when you use a Task Killer App to kill an app vs. what happens when the Android OS kills an app due to scarce resources? The Android SDK says that the Application.onTerminate() method isn't called when the OS kills an app due to scarce resources. So it sounds like the OS doesn't cleanly close apps and that it does exactly what the much-debated task killers do. If they do the same thing, then task killers don't do any more harm than the OS itself, right?
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Jun 24, 2010
My phone is low on memory, when I open my app manager it shows my mail app is using 59mb of memory. I have erased all mail and cleared the cache with no change. I am running android 2.1
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Oct 30, 2009
I currently have a personal (HTC Touch Pro) and business phone (iPhone). With Sprint now offering unlimited any-mobile (freeing up 1300+ minutes a month on my family plan) and Google Voice allowing me to get a separate business number, I'm thinking about dropping my iPhone, and replacing the HTC with either a BlackBerry Tour or a Hero. I work in project management; I know that the BB does have applications that would be useful to me (as does the iPhone), but I can't find comparable apps for Android. As a personal phone though, I would rather have the Hero. Given that I've only been able to spend a limited amount of time browsing the Android Market in a Sprint store, I was hoping someone here might know of some good replacements for my "must have" apps.
1) PIM / Task management. I have a lot of tasks, meetings, and deadlines to manage. I need something similar to the functionality provided by Outlook. I currently use Pocket Informant on the iPhone, which allows me to view multiple calandars, see my schedule from the month-level view, and integrate my to-do lists. I can also assign calander events and to-do tasks to projects, give them priority, provide extra notes, add multiple reminders, etc.. I could probably live with the Android's calander, but I definately need a good to-do app.
2) Time tracking. I have an app on the iPhone (TimeLogger) that lets me track how much time I spend on projects for clients. The one I currently use allows me to start a timer and then come back later to stop it, which is helpful but not a must.
3) Personal finance manager. I track all of my purchases, have several accounts / cards, and need to be able to track/filter business vs personal purchases.
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May 14, 2010
I currently run TasKiller because I find my phone gets SOOO SLOW. I back all the way out of apps but I still have trouble.
Is this still an issue for those with some form of 2.1 or am I doing something wrong? Is there maybe a better way of managing my system resources without killing apps?
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Aug 15, 2010
Does anyone know what the My Uploads task is? Can it be killed?
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Mar 14, 2010
What is the best task killer. I was using ATK but it would start out at like 60 know free then with in hours be down to 30 with no running apps showing and with the phone just sitting there. Also how do they work and why do some apps keep reappearing like footprints.
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Nov 30, 2009
I'm currently using Task Killer & Task panel to control memory usage on the phone (someone please let me know if i should use something else). I have a habit in Task panel to hit the option of "Kill All Background Tasks" which does the job & frees up a lot of memory. However I use the Notes App & Remind Me App a lot & want to be able to ensure these are NOT killed when i do this as otherwise the reminders don't work. Does anyone know how to do this is either of these apps or what other app i could use instead of these 2 to control.
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