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View Full Version : Thou Shalt Not Kill: Background Tasks On Your Android Phone


Jason Lee
10-01-2010, 05:00 PM
<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://lifehacker.com/5650894/' target='_blank'>http://lifehacker.com/5650894/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"Android task killers improve your phone's performance while also boosting battery life-or at least that's the much-debated promise. Here's a look at how task killers actually work, when you should (or shouldn't) use them, and what you can do instead."</em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/adt/auto/1285945827.usr206.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>This is an article that every new Android user should read. Especially if you are coming over from the Windows Mobile world as I did. Back in my WinMo days it was a constant battle to keep enough free RAM for my device to run smooth and fast so the first thing I did when I got my shiny new Nexus One was to find myself a nice task killer. This was, of course, until I realized that I was killing my calendar reminders, my alarms, and who knows what else. Once I learned how Android handled memory management and background processes I removed that pesky task killer. This is a must read for all Android users. Head over and check it out and share your task killer horror stories with us.</p>

Craig Horlacher
10-01-2010, 09:31 PM
Good Article. I'm going to try not killing things for a while and see what happens. I had heard that froyo was supposed to have improved memory management but I guess I never really gave it a chance. I have had problems and had to reboot from killing things I shouldn't have.

Jon Westfall
10-02-2010, 05:01 PM
I keep a task killer on hand for those times I need to kill an app just to get it to restart. Otherwise, I don't schedule task killings or use it to wipe all running tasks.

Jason Lee
10-02-2010, 05:40 PM
I do the exact same thing. I have the process manager that is built into Astro pinned to a home screen. It is nice to have a task manager around just in case some app gets out of control. :)

The process manager built into Astro also shows CPU utilization so every once in a while I'll fire it up to see if any thing is eating away at my battery unnecessarily.