Database Develop

Stop or close an app

What has everyone been doing to close apps since Froyo doesn't work with task killers? For me its not a matter of my Nexus getting bogged down sometimes I just want an app closed when I don't use it.

apollostees said:
What has everyone been doing to close apps since Froyo doesn't work with task killers? For me its not a matter of my Nexus getting bogged down sometimes I just want an app closed when I don't use it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So lets ignore the fact that stopping normal running apps will slow down your phone and increase battery usage and assume you must have a good reason.
That reason must be the app is not behaving well, so just stop it from the Manage Applications section in settings.

Cool. Thanks.
Question though: how does stopping an app slow down the phone? Other than I guess the initial action. I have often wondered why a self shutdown isn't written into most apps such as on a desktop OS.

Android will keep the app in memory, but it will not run. So keeping it 'running' isn't using any battery. But if you decide to switch back to it, it is already loaded and ready to go.
If you force close it, then it needs to reload completely again when you go back.
When it is in memory it is not slowing down the phone, or taking any battery. If a new app needs the memory, Android closes the old app instantly without any noticeable performance issues.
So by forcing them closed you are forcing Android to spend more time and battery to reload it every time you go back. By leaving it open, you let Android do the best thing with it. Which means when you go back to it, it could still be there waiting.

ok so i could use some help... please...

alright it is with great pain that i am writing this, but i really need some help here. for months i've read the forums, searched for answers, asked little individual questions, IMed with people directly for help... and i'm still having trouble.
i rooted my T-Mobile G1 all the way back when cupcake first came out. everything was great. life was grand. everything ruled. i was a happy android fanboy, talking friends into switching to android, talking crap about iphones... the works... but slowly things started getting slower and slower and slower...
the obvious thing was to wipe and reflash. i was constantly just updating to newer cyanogen roms at that point without wiping. so i wiped to the newest cyanogen at the time (can't remember at this point, but just picture it was like a couple months after cupcake). so things were good again for a little bit, but then it started slowing down again, getting FC's, etc. so a friend recommended i switch to superD... i did, and again, everything was great for a while. i consistently upgraded superD roms (sometimes wiping in between sometimes not). eventually i got to the point where i was on the most recent superD release. it lasted about a day before things started slowing down. examples include when i hit home to exit an application and go to the home screen, the whole screen would either turn black or just show my wallpaper for a good 5 seconds before my home screen would appear, or opening the browser would take like 10 seconds. lots of slow down.
so with the help of a friend i decided to completely wipe and reformat/repartition my sd card. i bought titanium backup but i didn't even bother with it, i said to myself, look, you barely use any of the stuff you have right now, how about just start fresh and reinstall things as you need them manually. so i formatted, repartitioned (using amon Ra's recovery, using the menu option that helps you do it automatically). i made sure i had the most recent radio and spl (this was just a couple months ago), and reflashed the most recent superD (i think its 1.11 if i remember correctly)... again, maybe one day of good performance before everything slowed down. this was also about the time when my battery life started becoming an issue. i'm not exaggerating when i say i couldn't make it home without breaking under 20% battery by the end of the day... and i really don't use my phone THAT much. i'd say i'm a little above average on my usage. i'll get into my widgets and apps in a second, but i really don't use that much stuff...
SO... continuing my story (thanks for sticking with me if you're still reading...). when cyanogens 2.1 for the g1 rom came out (5.0.8d/s) i decided it was time for a change. i reformatted AGAIN, repartioned AGAIN, and flashed 5.0.8. basically, i've got the same story going on. slowdowns, poor battery life, etc.
so here i am with my cyanogen 5.0.8 flashed g1. let me tell you about apps and widgets and stuff. right now i have a regular wallpaper (not live), 14 icons between my 5 screens and just the google search and power management widgets. i used to have calwidget, the genie widget (both news and weather), and the setcpu widgets too, but i decided to take them off to see if it would help with performance. zero help. apps that i either know for sure are always running or i think may have some impact are twidroyd, newsrob, craigsnotif (craigslist notifier), and dealdroid. i don't think any other apps are running and/or do automatic updates for content and stuff like that.
i also use cachemate (purchased) regularly to clear my caches. apps2sd is enabled.
i'm not sure what other information you'd need to help me out, but just let me know and i'll try to give you more details.
right now, i've got slow down like almost all the time. things are constantly pausing, slowing down. i feel like i'm back on my t-mobile mda with winmo5 haha. and forget about it with the battery. i left the house with 90% battery this morning. i went to the gym. went home. picked up lunch. came to work. its been like 4 hours. i currently have 19% battery. all i've done is make 2 phone calls, about a dozen text messages and i've sent 2 tweets (about my battery problem haha). i also used google maps once to look up a number. my wifi and gps is off.
so there we go. really guys, please please please. help me out if you can. any help would be appreciated. i'm so sick of this. and i'm stuck in contract until july 2011. so i'm not getting a new phone any time soon. i gotta figure this thing out.
i really appreciate your help.
thanks.
Dave

OH... and PS... forgot to mention that I just got a new battery this week thinking maybe the battery was just getting old and bad. obviously, no such luck.

I had the same issues till I flashed a SuperD, then everything was fine. I just recently flashed the Froyo from Cyanogen and its like it fixed everything and I'm on a brand new device (knock on wood)!
How old is your G1? Do we know if there are issues with the first run out of the factory? Is that even an issue?

i got the g1 last july. so it was already out for a while at that point. it was new from a store though. i suppose there could be something actually wrong with the phone itself, but i don't know. i was thinking of trying the cyanogen froyo but because its not a stable release yet i figured it would be just this bad or worse...

I promise cm5.0.8 has wonderful battery life when no custom apps are installed and not on any network..
so the question is what is your phone doing, and ought it be doing what it is doing.
There are some nice built in tools for this
Applications->running services
And
Applications -> manage applications (check out the filter in the menu from that screen)
You may be surprised by the apps the think they need to constantly have a service running for some painful trivial job the android API has better interfaces for.. if in addition to that you don't need the app uninstall it.
Otherwise experiment with comp cache and lock launcher in memory.

another example, as i was reading this i was on the phone and i just finished the call and hung up, and i was previously in text messages, it took 12 seconds for my text messages to come up. thats just insane...
as for running services:
- GTalkService <--- I use GTalk all the time
- GenieRefresh Service (Restarting) <--- weird considering I disabled this widget, although I'd LIKE to have it back
- Maps FriendsAppWidgetUpdater (Restarting) <--- never used this in my life
- NewsRob UnreadWidgetProvidor (Restarting) <--- never used the widget before (as a matter of fact, you have to pay to use the widget and i have the free version... weird)
-Twidroyd Background Service <--- understandable, I use this constantly
- AKNotepad Snaptic Update (Restarting) <---- umm... I use this all the time but I don't know why a notepad program would need an updater service running... interesting...
- Swype <---- gotta have that
- CM Updater (Restarting) <--- Don't really think that needs to be on all the time. Can easily manually refresh that...
So that's it. I didn't realize this was included now. Very cool. On older roms I had to use task managers which don't seem to really work. I'm going to stop everything except twidroyd, gtalk and swype right now and see how that does... at the bottom it says Avail: 3.2MB+0.00B in 0 ... Other: 55MB in 4 ... While typing that the Maps FriendsAppWidget just popped back up... I'm gonna see if theres a setting...
In the meantime, does any of this give you any ideas? thank you so much for the advice. Also what does (Restarting) mean?

ezterry said:
Otherwise experiment with comp cache and lock launcher in memory.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
oh and i have compcache not checked and launcher in memory IS checked... i just tried turning on the compcache option... lets see how that goes...

ok so...
now that i know about those things that were running, i stopped all the ones i don't need, and also went into the apps to see if there was any options for turning off automatic updates, background syncing, etc etc for those things... i'm gonna charge my phone while getting ready to go out and then we'll see how it goes throughout the evening. lets see if i make it home with more than 20% battery left (i'll be gone for like 5 hours). if so then we're on to something here still i find it weird that i can't have a few widgets loaded. but whatever, i'll take a smoothly running phone that lasts all day and i just have to click on icons to get to stuff any day... thanks for the help, i'll let you know how its going tomorrow.

the next day
ok so i tried the compcache and keep launcher in memory options last night, messing with both settings. i found that every possible combination became very unstable other than the one i already had (which was compcache off and launcher in memory on). after trying to shut excessive running services like i mentioned yesterday, and also restarting the phone and then shutting them again, i got NO difference in performance OR battery life...
so back to square one... any ideas guys?
thanks so much for any help you can give me. i really really appreciate it.

polarbearmc said:
ok so i tried the compcache and keep launcher in memory options last night, messing with both settings. i found that every possible combination became very unstable other than the one i already had (which was compcache off and launcher in memory on). after trying to shut excessive running services like i mentioned yesterday, and also restarting the phone and then shutting them again, i got NO difference in performance OR battery life...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Um... The compcache instability scares me a bit
Compcache has had issues (maybe still does) where the first time you enable it the phone crashes.. but then works fine with Compcache on reboot. Otherwise it really ought no make the phone unstable. (it may or may not speed things up depending on how memory is being used.. usually however it allows 12MB of memory that is rarely used to be compressed, allowing a little more active memory to be utilized) You may want to look into wiping dalvik-cache both on the internal memory and SD card:
Enter console and run (this will restart the phone)
Code:
rm -rf /data/dalvik-cache/*
rm -rf /cache/dalvik-cache/*
rm -rf /sd-ext/dalvik-cache/*
reboot
if you get an error about no files found thats not an issue; but other errors may indicate a problem.
This may help system stability (with or without compcache) .. but won't do anything about the battery life (nor speed unless something was seriously wrong)
-------------------
Unfortunately you will either need to erase all your apps and just run stock CM5 [maybe slowly restore your apps you really need] -- OR -- be very patient and debug whatever application(s) are causing issues on your phone (and maybe complain to the dev for failing to read/understand google's documentation on how to write android applications.. not that some of the google apps haven't quite figured that out until recently)
Thus again the main question is what is running on your phone.. The places I mentioned before allow you to see the services (most of which usually restart if you run the related application again) but not strictly all the details to look for.
Example 1 An widget service is likely holding onto memory starving timer services (those not listed) and swapping out other services (phone/launcher making everything feel slow) At the same time the widget is not very active usually and may not connect to the internet at all; thus may not reduce battery life.
Example 2 An IM client on the other hand may requires a service to keep TCP/IP connections alive, and if not coded properly may be very persistent and cause a slow continual stream of data from your phone requiring a large amount of power to keep the phone on 2G/Edge.
Example 3 A Task killer an kill tasks that re-spawn, or kill a task in use if it doesn't know better causing things to behave in strange ways.. so can killing services/applications from the setting screens btw.. but at least that is a one off by user decision not a automatic operation in the background. Tasks when re-spawned may require more data from the internet thus more power to 2G/Edge
User: Then the one that causes me the most problems: A user that keeps the phone in his/her pocket rather than surfing the web, checking XDA, or continuously checking the battery level is using the device less thus will have longer battery life. (careful to not fall into this trap)
Other Ideas:
SetCPU: set the sleep CPU low in profiles (sleep for me is 245/160)[/*]
Verify End action: Settings->End Button Behavior->Go to sleep[/*]
Set longer periods between polls in applications that poll the net (example twitter every 10 or 20mins.. not 5)[/*]
Larger net transfers on wifi if available (example tell newsrob to sync on wifi only) wifi drains the battery faster than idle, but is much cheaper if larger amounts of data are involved.[/*]
As you can see many things will impact the system. You will need to find the ones eating your battery
Another helpful screen for debugging this may be Settings->Spare Parts->Battery History and Settings->Spare Parts->Usage Statistics
I get between 4h and 12h batter life under semi-normal conditions. 4h = surfing 3g + tappatalk + games.. 12h check email/tweat if i get one.. otherwise stays in my pocket. I've seen my test phone hang out for days on a 2g network without data. (so you can always set your apn type to mms if you just need it to be a phone for many hours.. mms keeps mms support btw)
Ebuddy (and most other MSN/AIM/ect chat clients is frequently one of the biggest problems on my phone.. so if I need more battery those are the first to go.. and whomever it is can poke me on gtalk/txt/or wait
Good luck in your search.. Took me a while to make cm5 work as long as cm4.. most of it was mis-behaving apps that I either know to shut off when I need longer battery life.. or have found replacements for.. or avoid widget functionality if the widget was misconfigured. (

[Q] Select which apps run at start up???

Is there a way to select which apps you want to start up and run when the phone is booted? Since I've rooted I've had a lot more apps running right after turning the phone on (15-25 apps running). It is sluggish at start up, I'm assuming this is because the phone is trying to start and run a whole bunch of apps at the same time as well as obtain signal, check verify media on the SD card etc. and the processor is bogged down. Is there a way to select which apps I'd like to run at start up?

If you want to reduce lag try roms. Any app that tries to control what Is starting up will largely be ineffective

Any speculation as to why I never experienced this until after I rooted my phone?

Rooting should not cause programs to just start running.
Are you certain you have not added something else since root that may be causing lag?

I wouldn't describe it as general lag. It's only at start up. Once everything has loaded it runs the same it did the day I got it. It's just that it takes longer to boot initially. And when I use my task killer once everything is loaded it typically kills off 20-25 apps. Before I rooted I had a max of 6 apps running at start up. Currently I have 80 apps installed. Before I rooted I might have had 10 less apps.

Go to market, put startup in search, you should find several apps that claim to help with this

Thanks, I'll give that a try.

Startup Auditor. Works for me, give it a shot.

Phone locks when receiving a call

OG Droid with Liquid Smooth 3.2 (same problem with 3.1). I haven't tried many other roms, so I don't know if this is a problem with my hardware (the phone is refurb and only 1 month old) or if I installed something that is breaking things.
The issue: If I receive a call the phone will allow me to answer (move slider) but then lock so that the call is in speaker phone mode (or at least very loud) and I cannot control anything on the screen. The power button will turn off the screen, but that's it. The other person apparently cannot always hear me, so I don't know if the mic is working at that point. If I let the call end, the phone does not recover. The only way to recover seems to be to pull the battery.
Last time this happened, the caller could hear me so I let the call end. After a minute or two, com.android.phone popped a force close message. A minute later, another app popped a force close. It did not recover even after an hour or so. Battery reset worked.
This issue is not consistent. It occurs maybe 1 out of 20 incoming calls. I had the issue on LS3.1, so I upgraded to LS3.2. Same issue. I can try another rom (CGM7.x), but I really like LS so I'd like to see if there is a resolution.
Is there a log mode I can enable to see if something consistent happens when the phone locks? I have a task killer installed. Could that be an issue? I'm not doing anything that I would have thought could be considered challenging for the phone (answering a phone call), so I'm not sure what to check.

I had this problem often on my droid 1. I ran CM7 nightlies and Prime's kernel at 1.1GHz.
Mostly it happened while I was doing other things with the phone. I think it was due to low RAM.
If you check settings - manage applications - running, how much free RAM do you have?
I usually had 40-50MB free and that wasn't enough.
Ditch whatever you can from your apps and OS to free some up.
TiBU allows you to chuck a lot of system stuff that's not really needed.
I would still be on my OG if it weren't for this problem, so I hope you find a solution that works for you.
A lot of people are on Steeldroid with the droid 1. It's still getting updates. Maybe try that.
-CM7 on DInc2

In general, this happens when the phone is just sitting there (nothing but the regular system stuff running essentially). The last time this happened where the force close messages appeared I had the web browser open. I hadn't considered ram, but that's a good possibility. I do have Advanced Task Killer running as a service, so perhaps that is related.
With ATK non running, it says I have 115MB used/64MB free. 15MB of this used memory is for settings.
With ATK running, it claims 68-79 free (it's set up to kill tasks since I was worried about memory hogs originally).
I'll look into Steeldroid. Like I said, this is a new phone. What I didn't say is that my wife got it for me to see if I would use a smart phone (was on an old lg texting phone before and this thing is physically much larger). She got it for super cheap, so if I have to go with something different, that wouldn't be the end of the world. If that were the path forward, can you recommend a couple good options with full slide out keyboards?
Thanks!

I dunno, I loved the physical keyboard on my old OG, but I left it behind when I jumped moto for HTC.
D2, D3, and D4 are supposed to be great improvements over the D1.
I see the dev for Steeldroid has a D3 version that's up to date. Maybe look for one of those?
I've always been a Motorola fan. Maybe I should have stuck with them, but I figured I'd have to get used to screen keyboards at some point...
I'd say try Steeldroid on your OG first, get a good kernel to go with it, ditch the task killer and let android handle it. See if that helps.
Good luck! B-)
-CM7 on DInc2

[Q] Intense lag on call receiving

Hello everyone.
I'm running on cocore 9.8 and ikaster's pure vanilla rom, with hungarian baseband. I would say I'm moderately satisfied with the phones performance most of the time. I mean apps run smoothly, except when I have a program running(lets say WAZE, facebook, clash of clans, or even poweramp) and I get a call. This makes the phone lag hard, if it manages to proceed to showing the dial screen in time, and I get to actually pick up the phone, it still lags for about 5-10 second while the calling party is waiting for me to join the conversation. What I must say could be really embarrassing and annoying. What I am looking for is a solution for this. What I thought about, is to set up a process what clears my memory, or exit the application running right when the call comes in. Since 95% of the time I'm not doing anything uninterruptable on the phone (clash of clans or facebook) I wouldnt mind shutting down Everything for a call. Because it's a phone afterall, and I want to be able to pick it up.
I'm also ready to switch rom's if it is necessary to obtain better multitasking or prioritizing, if it's worth the hassle. I've been reading the hyped roms lately, but the responses are pretty mixed, and I'm not confident enough it is worth spending hours on installing a different rom(i know installing takes minutes, but costumizing, installing applications, and generally getting familiar with the new stuffs could take a whole bunch of time), I would love to try them all, but I just dont have the time to mess around with it. Besides I have work calls to make quite often. I'm aware that you are not allowed to recommend any rom (try it for yourself is the policy), but I would like to know if you think I could get better experience if I switch maybe to the indian baseband or the latest italian, or go with cm 10.2, even if there is any way to fix this problem.
How i got along with the phone is that I clean the background applications mostly after I'm done using the phone for now, this way it responds fine, and works alright. But sadly I can't do that when a call comes in. I don't even understand why this is have to go this way, since what I've read is that the OS should deal with the background applications and ram management, but somehow it doesnt seem to work as smooth as it should and it often requires manual cleaning. Also i do not use task killers (i've read they do more harm than good), I do it manually long pressing the home button.
again what i see as the easiest and 'best' option is to find a way to make the phone do this automatically whenever a call comes in, and possibly do it before the ram gets filled up and the phones goes numb.
Thank you for your help in advance