A task killer is not needed for the Evo.

[Cicatrize]

After using WM for so long, I've been accustomed to killing my running applications because they're all actively running and eating up RAM and battery life. Because of this, I thought I needed a task killer app for my Evo to make sure I was getting the most out of my device. After using it for the first few days, I decided to keep one of these programs (ATK) open and just "monitor" without killing any tasks.

I saw a nice surprise. Apps were automatically being handled by the Android OS by closing them. So, that's great, but what about the other "apps" that are still there and aren't going away? Well, there are two answers to this. The first is that as many of you may have heard, Android doesn't really have "apps", in the traditional sense of the word. They're all "activities" and can borrow other activities. So, if I develop an application that searches for restaurants in a certain area and need to show my users a map, I can call on the Google Maps activity to do so. It doesn't even have to be built into my app.

The other answer was shown to me after I uninstalled ATK an decided to install a program called ES Task Manager. This one shows you all the tasks running and what they actually are. It will show you if they are a service, background, foreground, visible, or empty. I assume empty is a status that consumes very little RAM and battery life, if any. Background appears to be apps that are in suspended status, therefore just held in the RAM but not consuming much battery life. The OS seems to kill these empty and background apps whenever it either needs the memory or they haven't been used in a long time.

So, I'm not telling you guys what to do, but I would suggest not using a task killer because one, it's not really needed, and two, you can cause some problems with apps trying to use the activity that you're killing.

[karong]

I see what you're saying but I still use mine. I did on my Hero and now the Evo. I check every few hours or so and I always see apps like Sprint Nav, MP3 store, Footprints, etc running when I dont need them to be. I dont use any of those apps and i do notice that my phone runs a tad smoother when those are closed.

[slopokdave]

Sorry if I am hijacking, but can you guys explain the "Running Services" screen... for example,


at the bottom I see "Avail 21MB+216MB in 30"... does that mean 237 total MB available? What is the "in 30" mean? Then to the right I see "Other: 55MB in 4" huh?

[hyabusha]

I don't use any ATK, and my EVO says "Thank You"

[MikeOD]

Originally Posted by karong

I see what you're saying but I still use mine. I did on my Hero and now the Evo. I check every few hours or so and I always see apps like Sprint Nav, MP3 store, Footprints, etc running when I dont need them to be. I dont use any of those apps and i do notice that my phone runs a tad smoother when those are closed.

Yeah...I want to uninstall all the sprint nav/nfl/nascar bullshit, and the amazon mp3 store...but I don't want to root the phone...yet.

[clockcycle]

As with all my Android devices, when ever I used ATK, the phone would lag or become sluggish suddenly/randomly.

My guess is by manually forcing things to close, it also closes shared/needed resources, that the unit has to reload, because I force it closed..

When I leave the unit alone and let it do it's own thing, it keeps chugging along just fine.

But honestly, I could not tell you if it is really a result of me force closing something or if it's me installing apps that cause some conflict.

-CC

[ButtaKnife]

I was getting a little annoyed with Facebook and other things showing up in ATK all the time, and now I think I understand why. Sense may have been loading things from those apps for the Friend Stream widget. I have removed that widget since I wasn't going to use it, but now I'm also noticing that Facebook and the other social apps aren't showing up in my task list now. Long story short, if something shows up in the list that you aren't using, check your widgets. It makes perfect sense after reading the OP.

[dakidobf]

I'm glad the OP made a post like this. There are a lot of new Android users here now and its good to have an informative post about these tasks killers. I myself am a former Winmo user, but I haven't installed ATK because of a similiar post like this, one that actually explains why you don't need it. All the posts I've read saying you do need it say the same thing "I see a lot of stuff running and I don't like it so let me get a task manager." Thats just not a good enough reason IMO.

[ivoryman50]

I've spoken with people who are on the complete opposite side of this. Also, as I'm using my phone, it seems like the phone gets hot with some applications like my TP2 did. It doesn't get as hot or kill the battery like the WM, but I can still tell that the phone seems to be being pushed. Any suggestions about this? I know I run a lot of random apps as the phone is still new and I'm just checking stuff out, but I want to make sure that as I start to use the phone more on a regular operating basis that I get the full potential out of the battery.

[Cicatrize]

The device getting hot is just part of computing in general. Even a PC will run much hotter when under load than when idle. Certain tasks like navigation where constant data and GPS are being used will affect this, as well as video recording or watching HD video. Not much around this.