Comments on: Revisiting Android Task Killers and Why You Still Don’t Need One…

By: John Rogers

John Rogers — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 05:23:00 +0000

safe mode has more than one version these days, using safe mode with network support can still leave you open to attacks.

By: Joesmack

Joesmack — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:51:00 +0000

And you believed him??? Does he develop for Android? Can he even tell you what the platform was that Android was built from (it was Linux for those who don’t know which is why I chose my android phone over the iPhone). Did he work for the maker of the phone? Probably no to all these questions. He is simply a phone sales person and his job is to dazzle you with fancy phones with glittery looks and features. He isn’t a programmer, a developer, or a IT tech. IF he was he wouldn’t be working as a salesman…. Get the point. Read forums and discussion boards about your phone. They are usually answered by developers, hackers, and those who know the OS language and how to program it. Don’t listen to the moron at the store that knows nothing more than what the prices of phones and plans are and how to close the deal on you when it may be more than you can afford. They are the equivalent to the car salesman. Do you ask him for mechanical advise or do you turn to and ASE certified mechanic that has been servicing cars for many years…?

By: Brittany

Brittany — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 18:40:00 +0000

I have a Android giner bread phone with metro pcs and I had the advanced task killer on my phone and It KILLED MY BATTERY BAD SO I ASKED SOMEONE WHAT what there oppion was on the TASK KILLER and they said its a BAD IDEA SO I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS APP TO ANYONE THAT WANTS TO SAVE THERE BATTERY LIFE!!!

By: 1poptart

1poptart — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 22:27:00 +0000

Is it alright to use the stock app killer that comes built in on android deivces?

By: Brett Selph

Brett Selph — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 06:36:00 +0000

For the “geniuses” who supposedly know Android inside and out, you are wrong. You are repeating what each other says, it has become an echo chamber, and you have staked out a position that is incorrect.
Android might be “designed” to load up on tasks, keeping memory as full to the brim with “ready” tasks, as possible …but Android being INTENTIONALLY designed this way, versus this choice actually constituting GOOD design, are two different issues. And there existing a ROCK SOLID IMPLEMENTATION of the design goals (that STILL WORKS after Verizon has mucked with it)… is yet another issue. It’s not good enough to tell me they did it this way “on purpose”. The world is full of bad design choices that were made quite intentionally. And this particular design choice was motivated not to save battery but by a desire to increase the apparent responsiveness of Android by preloading code that might be needed very soon. It most certainly does NOT save battery. In fact, it wastes it every time something is loaded that isn’t later used, and all of the juice used to load it, wasted. That’s called a trade-off.
A road intersection intentionally designed with no stop-signs and no traffic lights …would have higher thruput if those idiot drivers didn’t do stupid things like try to drive thru the intersection at the same time! Nothing wrong with my BRILLIANT design of the intersection! It’s the stupid drivers!
Predictive preloading of tasks WOULD be a good design choice if there were no downsides and no way it could go wrong. It would be a good design choice if the implementation were so good that all of the ways it COULD go wrong, had been thoroughly debugged and everything tuned to a fare-thee-well. But task management on real-world Android phones is a chaotic, buggy, crash-and-reboot nightmare. I don’t care what Android fanboys say about noobs being stupid and the experience and naive users being irrelevant (nor do I believe that fanboys fully admit to the number of crashes they themselves experience). In fact, Android, for all its initial promise, is now a gawdawful mess. And the fanboys know it.
Saying that battery is being wasted by the user who (in a supposed state of “Android ignorance”) keeps killing tasks, is twisting things around and blaming the wrong party. If Android keeps burning battery by reloading the same tasks that i have just INTENTIONALLY killed, it is Android that is wasting battery, not me. There are very good reasons to kill tasks, NOT, as claimed, only ONE justified case (killing a “badly behaved” app). Indeed, I kill perfectly well-behaved apps all the time …not because ANY of the apps I kill are behaving badly, but because Android itself is not doing a very good job of making enough memory available to the tasks I want to run. And even if “badly behaved” apps are to be blamed, one wonders what Android apologists expect. They are holding appications to a far higher standard than they hold Android itself. If a developer like Yahoo is unable to develop “well behaved” apps, despite employing top-talent programmers, extensive testing, and constant bug-fixes … then there is clearly something ELSE wrong with the Android picture besides a few half-assed programmers putting out obscure junk.
Using Yahoo Messenger as an example, if you have many dozens of contacts, and if you never clear the your chat history (not because you’re too stooopid to know how, but because you NEED to keep that history…) well, in such a case, the YM app becomes slower and slower, and more and more of a memory hog. If Android “sees” that the user is interacting with the YM app, and if the YM task is requesting more storage, but Android insists on withholding that storage and instead loads into that storage “First Aid”, “Maps”, “Google+”, “ReChat”, “Facebook”, “WikiDroid”, and six other tasks… DESPITE the fact that i haven’t used some of these apps in several weeks (and have used NONE of them since I last booted my phone) …one is forced to wonder about the ivory-tower assumptions of the Android designers.
The user experiences a dramatic slowdown in YM, followed by a freeze-out. My keypresses are ignored. Swype ignores my swyping. After a while, the phone comes partially back to life… some of my keypresses are honored, but since i have to retype ignored keypresses and can’t distinguish ignored ones from keypresses that are just wading thru some kind of Android molasses, what i see in actual practice is a mixture of missing words and text duplications. This is called user frustration, fanboy. I look up at my task count (my task-killer shows this number in a little box in the notification area), and I notice that the number of loaded tasks has crept up from 3 tasks to 10. The utterly unresponsive period was when Android was “helpfully” loading those 7 unwanted tasks. Now that they are loaded, YM has thawed just a bit, but is now very slow and quirky, because it is now living inside of a little memory box that is smaller than what it needs. If I don’t wait too long, I can bring up my task killer and knock off the competing (and useless) tasks, which instantly restores YM to peppy responsiveness and predictable behavior. But constantly killing tasks is itself a big pain. So often I just put up with the memory misallocation molasses and hope that I don’t get any incoming texts from other online friends. Because that will freeze my phone to the point where I have to yank the battery.
A reboot. My fingernails are actually becoming chipped from prying off the back cover so often. Since the OS is usually locked up at this point, a soft reboot using the button on the side of the phone, generally doesn’t work. I’m wondering why the designers of the Galaxy didn’t include a HARDWARE power button, one that physically interrupts the power. I mean, they knew they were going to be running Android, right?
These frequent freeze-outs and repetitious reboots interrupt whatever i was doing on a regular basis. I don’t like it, but it does give me plenty of time to think. So I wax philosophical, on topics like Marketing imperatives intruding on OS design choices. Images of pimping out a potentially good OS, to the Marketing department before it is installed. I’m drumming my fingers, thinking… Hmmmm, Dear Android fanboy …doesn’t it take lots of time and a fair amount of battery to reboot? Fanboy… what our the design-goal again? Fanboy, can you explain again to me why it’s a good thing for Android to preload apps I wasn’t planning on using, like Facebook, WikiDroid and Google+? Fanboy, the only app I’m using right now is YM, which is asking for more memory. Why isn’t Android giving Yahoo Messenger the memory it is requesting, even though there is plenty of memory available? I’ve got time to listen to your explanation, fanboy, because Android is still rebooting…

By: Russell Babbitt

Russell Babbitt — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 02:07:00 +0000

I used to focus on correcting others, using this overly active and highly intelligent brain of mine to let them know what they were doing wrong and usually not even offering advice on how to fix the “problem” I had diagnosed them with. – This link shows a lot of the steps that I used to focus more on myself, and stop expecting so much of the world and it’s inhabitants. I find that I am much happier now accepting people for who and how they are. and working on myself rather than them. I expect nothing anymore and it’s a much better way for me to live my life, expectations are pre-meditated resentments - http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Being-a-Condescending-Person - Good luck and I am not trying to criticize you, just share my personal experience with my criticism of others.

By: RainMan

RainMan — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 01:50:00 +0000

I personally worry about my side of the street. In my experience I have had many people who have less than perfect grammar communicate ideas to me clearly and efficiently. I have also had experience dealing with people who are condescending towards anyone they feel that they can pick on, and while sometimes these people are very smart and have some good ideas, I find it much easier and pleasurable to converse, exchange ideas, and constructively communicate with the first type of person. I think communication is about the message, not the messenger. As long as the message is understandable I try to just listen and think of what it means to me… – “Wisdom comes even from the mouth of a fool…”

By: Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:24:00 +0000

But then how would you kill the second one.

By: Ed

Ed — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 23:20:00 +0000

And this shows that world is screwed

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:32:00 +0000

Same here. Everytime I experienced lagging while scrolling through the homescreens or in-apps, I’ll just head over to the task killer and kill all running programs. Works wonders everytime.

By: mason

mason — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 14:02:00 +0000

sory it should be half full. and always lagging after more ram used

By: mason

mason — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:59:00 +0000

I have encountered many times, certain app wont start/response until I clear the memory and even it is only have full

By: angermeans

angermeans — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 06:30:00 +0000

I said nothing about tying in me being an “Android Enthusiast” and selling a customer the right phone for their needs I only brought up the fact (and responded to another’s comment) that [not all] Verizon (or any company for that matter) customer care specialists are morons. Don’t take what I said and twist it all around. I am far from vain to think that just because I may prefer one brand doesnt mean that every person that I come in contact with needs that brand. Next time don’t read into statements especially when you have no idea who I am or what I do (especially at my job).

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:14:00 +0000

So by being an android enthusiast you are possible selling them the wrong phone? You are supposed to be professional not an enthusiast of any brand or phone, that’s why you are getting paid.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 00:12:00 +0000

Is this why you are selling Android over Windows Phones, commission?