Database Develop

why are apps running when i dont open them? memory leak also..

could be a noob question
every once in a while i will go into my advance task killer and see a bunch of apps running that i didnt manually open. i just checked my phone to see sprint nav, mp3 store, droid locator, internet, ringdroid, etc.. it also takes my phone from 71m free to about 35-40m. ill kill the apps, and they will be open again without me touching the phone. am i stupid, or is there actually a problem?

Okay bc those stock apps are coded to run at startup, and open themselfs for ease-of-access, this is normal. If you want to stop that, add them to autokill, and use a startup manager (market) to remove them from the start up screen.
For the mem issues, try disabling the GPS lovation services, that eats up battery life AND mem, same with internet.

If you really want your phone to fly, don't use a task killer.
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/

abcdfv said:
If you really want your phone to fly, don't use a task killer.
http://geekfor.me/faq/you-shouldnt-be-using-a-task-killer-with-android/
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
In theory this is true but in reality it couldn't be more misleading. Yes a task killer, especially one that is always running and using up resources itself is probably less than optimal in an Android environment, however they are sometimes necessary because things do not always work as they are supposed to. If you have root it is better to just use AutoKiller as it doesn't just kill programs but helps the OS by allowing you to set the limits for when the OS should start closing things. It also allows you to manually kill anything not working right.
Of course this is just my opinion, but I have tried it both ways on 3 different Android phones and my results were the same on all.

jlem26 said:
however they are sometimes necessary because things do not always work as they are supposed to.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
There's a section at the bottom that goes over this.
It's really more of an explanation that "Having free RAM will make my phone faster" will not make your phone faster.

[Q] Apps kept coming back after autokill -> memory leak -> lag

Hi all,
1. I've got these applications (Smartone-Vodophone SV app, 5 days weather, google map, social hub and such) that would keep coming back, relaunching themselves even after I put them onto my task manager's autokill list. Seems like they would wait around for me to enable the wifi/3G connection and then launch themselves. I even installed other apps to disable autolaunch and they would still launch themselves in the background every now and then. I had to kill them every time I unlocked my screen and these "launching and killing" cycles eventually depleted my memory down to below 100MB, making the lag situation even worse. Does anyone know how I can stop them from launching, without having to uninstall these apps?
2. I haven't installed the lagfix and I understand that the fix has to do with reformatting the apps' partition with a faster file system to reduce the lag (probably by giving it faster I/O access to the program's binaries?) I'm still waiting for Froyo, which should be out in a couple of weeks in my country. Does anyone know if Froyo would take care of this file system problem? Even with the Froyo or one-click lag fix, it still would not solve the apps launching and memory leak problem, right?
3. I notice that after I've installed more apps, the lag situation got worse. I was playing some songs on the external SD cards and it choked once in a while. I made sure I killed all the other apps and that I still got 100+MB to run just this one song player app and yet it would still choke. This tells me that the lag has nothing to do with available memory. And the player app was stock that came with the phone so there shouldn't be any fragmentation issue (apps installed later might have?) that makes it run slow. And if its the bad file system, this app, running all by itself, should have all the I/O bandwidth to itself so the access to the app's binaries should not have any lag... and neither should the access to the songs on the external SD card. So what exactly is causing the lag then? I don't see how the lagfix would solve this problem either. I actually have read that the lags would come back after a period of usage even with the lagfix. Anyone got an insight to this problem? What exactly is causing the lag? and why installing more apps seem to make it worse? and would Froyo be able to fix all these problems?
Thanks a lot.

@boarder838
I think you really need to read a lot more about just how Android works as you seem to have some strange ideas about how it works.
To start with you need to realise that having 200mb or 100mb of free Ram makes zero difference to performance only when you have no free Ram is it a problem and even then the system will sort it out for you by closing the least used program. Free Ram is just wasted Ram as it's not doing anything and will not make your device respond or work faster using a Auto Task Killer is wasting your battery and slowing down your device not speeding it up and saving battery as you seem to think. As i have pointed out above stop obsessing over your free Ram amount as unless you have none its not a problem stop using a Task Killer and you will most probably see your device responds faster as its not constantly killing things and just leaves them open doing nothing in the back ground which doesn't use Ram or Battery so just leave them be.
Yes Froyo will bring many improvements to our devices but won't fix a problem that doesn't exist re memory leaks and apps launching that you seem to think you have. I don't know but some of those apps may be system apps that need to run all the time which is why they keep relaunching. As for a lag fix well that's what we are all hoping for but if not I'm pretty sure the great people of this forum will come up with an easy to apply fix to it.
I have absolutely no problem playing Music or even streaming it over Bluetooth no lag stutters or break ups at all although my Music is on the Internal SD card. Maybe you should look at the quality that you have encoded your Music in as that may be causing problem. maybe some of the apps you have installed are also causing a problem but its impossible to know as we all install different apps and have different set ups.
I don't know how much experience you have with Android devices or flashing Roms but if you read enough and understand it you have the possibility to flash custom Rom's and various tweaks and fixes to make your device how you want it. That's part of the beauty of Android but don't rush into anything you are not sure about as you can end up with an expensive brick so read things many times and make sure you understand step by step what you are doing if you are going to attempt any of these things.
If you look at my signature you will see i am running a Custom Rom that includes a lag fix and various other tweaks it also allowed me to remove some of the programs in the official Rom that i didn't want or need. For me my device runs nice and smooth and fast of course I'm looking forward to Froyo and all the improvements that will bring but I'm quite happy with my Galaxy S the way it is now. Oh and this is my second Android device and I've never used a Task Killer never mind an Auto Task Killer and have never seen an out of Ram message either.
Marc

exactly what he said ^

Hi Marc,
Thanks for spending time to read through my long post and reply to it. I probably didn't explain my problem clearly in my post.
There were a couple of reasons I wanted to kill/stop the apps from starting:
1. Even before I installed any of those apps killer, I noticed that the available memory kept going down after a couple days of usage and it went down to below 100M. I figured some of the apps would need 10's of MB to run so I thought I should at least keep 100MB around so that it wouldn't run out of memory and start swapping when I start those apps. I don't know enough about Android but I assume its just like linux or other OS, when it runs out of physical memory, it would start swapping and slow things down. Even after I started using task killer and killed all the other tasks, the memory level would still not recover. That seems to point to a memory leak problem but using "Memory Booster" to do garbage collection seems to help. Still, it would be nice to be able to stop them from launching in the first place. <-- my first question.
2. I do not want any jobs/processes/apps that I don't need to run in the background to drain my battery. I don't think I can say for sure that those apps are all just idling and not using much CPU/battery. There are quite a few of them so if each of them use some CPU time/battery, it will add up eventually. Note that these are not system processes (or daemons as in unix's init.d). They are crappy apps from the cellular provider so I'm pretty sure they don't have to be running (they're probably just collecting my personal data or smth). I just thought there would be a way to stop them from launching without uninstalling them.
Thanks for answering my question regarding Froyo. If they would do the filesystem lagfix then I'll just wait for that update.
As for the music stuttering problem, my songs are on the external SD card but my old Nokia E85 phone has no problem playing with those songs on the same SD card. As I have pointed out in my last question, I was only running one app and with plenty of memory so it had nothing to do with available memory. I also suggested that however bad the filesystem was, the I/O bandwidth should still be enough to run this one music player app (access the program binary/libraries?) and to retrieve data from external SD card to play the music smoothly. So applying the lagfix probably won't help this problem though I still haven't tried the lagfix. Now I'm thinking that one of the task killer might be killing some system processes which were needed by the music player. I probably should uninstall all these task killers and see if it would help.
I have gotten the phone for only a couple of weeks so I haven't gotten around to try flashing different roms or rooting my phone. There's so much info scattered around on the web and I can't seem to find a source that really has the authority or complete information. I'll see if I have time later to look into all the tweaks and such but for now its just a phone to me and I just want it to run smoothly without having to spend too much effort to tune it.
Don't get me wrong. I still love the flexibility and customization opportunities provided by the Android platform and I just love to show off my "Beautiful Weather Widget", "Live Aquarium Wall Paper" and my cool 3D scrolling "Launcher Pro" to my iphone4 buddies and make them drool.
Thanks for you comment and let's hope Froyo will bring us a smooth running and stable platform.
Dogmann said:
@boarder838
I think you really need to read a lot more about just how Android works as you seem to have some strange ideas about how it works.
To start with you need to realise that having 200mb or 100mb of free Ram makes zero difference to performance only when you have no free Ram is it a problem and even then the system will sort it out for you by closing the least used program. Free Ram is just wasted Ram as it's not doing anything and will not make your device respond or work faster using a Auto Task Killer is wasting your battery and slowing down your device not speeding it up and saving battery as you seem to think. As i have pointed out above stop obsessing over your free Ram amount as unless you have none its not a problem stop using a Task Killer and you will most probably see your device responds faster as its not constantly killing things and just leaves them open doing nothing in the back ground which doesn't use Ram or Battery so just leave them be.
Yes Froyo will bring many improvements to our devices but won't fix a problem that doesn't exist re memory leaks and apps launching that you seem to think you have. I don't know but some of those apps may be system apps that need to run all the time which is why they keep relaunching. As for a lag fix well that's what we are all hoping for but if not I'm pretty sure the great people of this forum will come up with an easy to apply fix to it.
I have absolutely no problem playing Music or even streaming it over Bluetooth no lag stutters or break ups at all although my Music is on the Internal SD card. Maybe you should look at the quality that you have encoded your Music in as that may be causing problem. maybe some of the apps you have installed are also causing a problem but its impossible to know as we all install different apps and have different set ups.
I don't know how much experience you have with Android devices or flashing Roms but if you read enough and understand it you have the possibility to flash custom Rom's and various tweaks and fixes to make your device how you want it. That's part of the beauty of Android but don't rush into anything you are not sure about as you can end up with an expensive brick so read things many times and make sure you understand step by step what you are doing if you are going to attempt any of these things.
If you look at my signature you will see i am running a Custom Rom that includes a lag fix and various other tweaks it also allowed me to remove some of the programs in the official Rom that i didn't want or need. For me my device runs nice and smooth and fast of course I'm looking forward to Froyo and all the improvements that will bring but I'm quite happy with my Galaxy S the way it is now. Oh and this is my second Android device and I've never used a Task Killer never mind an Auto Task Killer and have never seen an out of Ram message either.
Marc
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Oh I found the problem with stuttering music. It was the "beautiful weather widget"! I tried removing all the task killers and aquarium etc and it still wouldn't work. As soon as I removed the weather widget there was no problem with music playback anymore. Anyone has the same problem that pretty weather widget?? I've already set the refresh period to every 3 hours but it still wouldn't help?!

[Q] Is advanced task killer bad?

im reading that advanced task killer is good and bad, so is it bad to install or does it really work? im running CM7 Stable.

EverythingNook said:
im reading that advanced task killer is good and bad, so is it bad to install or does it really work? im running CM7 Stable.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everything I've read says you don't need it with Android 2.2 and above.

I use it, nice quick and easy way to close things (like emulators that normally won't shut themselves off.)

dsf3g said:
Everything I've read says you don't need it with Android 2.2 and above.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
me too but my friends have 2.3 and they use it.

I use it if videos start to stutter (ie youtube etc). It seems to help.

It's bad if you set it to Auto-Kill. The reason is because from 2.2 onward, if you kill (not Force Close) and app, it'll just restart itself. That being said, Linux is not like Windows. With Linux, the OS will fill up memory (RAM) with whatever it can, in this case applications, even if you're not using them. HOWEVER, it will only dedicate the CPU to whatever you're actually using, so whatever is in memory and isn't being used won't affect you (aside from poorly-coded apps). You can use ATK to kill an app if it's just one or two, but not everything.
If you set ATK to auto-kill everything or if you hit Kill Everything, you'll have a ton of apps restarting at the same time, slowing down your phone for a while and eating battery.

Product F(RED) said:
It's bad if you set it to Auto-Kill. The reason is because from 2.2 onward, if you kill (not Force Close) and app, it'll just restart itself. That being said, Linux is not like Windows. With Linux, the OS will fill up memory (RAM) with whatever it can, in this case applications, even if you're not using them. HOWEVER, it will only dedicate the CPU to whatever you're actually using, so whatever is in memory and isn't being used won't affect you (aside from poorly-coded apps). You can use ATK to kill an app if it's just one or two, but not everything.
If you set ATK to auto-kill everything or if you hit Kill Everything, you'll have a ton of apps restarting at the same time, slowing down your phone for a while and eating battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
alright ill stay away from it thanks!

That about sums it up. The only time an app should be killed is if a bug causes it to hang or slow down severely. Otherwise, let the Android system handle things itself.

In my experience it's nice to have for when you need to kill off a specific game or resource intensive app that seems to be slowing things down.

Product F(RED) said:
It's bad if you set it to Auto-Kill. The reason is because from 2.2 onward, if you kill (not Force Close) and app, it'll just restart itself. That being said, Linux is not like Windows. With Linux, the OS will fill up memory (RAM) with whatever it can, in this case applications, even if you're not using them. HOWEVER, it will only dedicate the CPU to whatever you're actually using, so whatever is in memory and isn't being used won't affect you (aside from poorly-coded apps). You can use ATK to kill an app if it's just one or two, but not everything.
If you set ATK to auto-kill everything or if you hit Kill Everything, you'll have a ton of apps restarting at the same time, slowing down your phone for a while and eating battery.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
so would you recommended going into the app itself and picking the apps i want to be closed? or could i also use the widget to close all of them?

I would only recommend going into the app itself, long-pressing on the app you want to kill, and then pressing kill. Closing all of them just forces a large number of apps to restart. I really only use it to kill certain apps that are more difficult to close.

[Q] app manager for CM7?

I'm running CM7 and I'm happy with how it performs compared to stock rom. I see improvement in battery and memory usage. So that's good.
However, some apps like facebook, maps, tango etc still appear to become active in the background.
Is there an application which will easily let me manage rights for every app I have on the device? I dont want to freeze them, just change their permissions so they never do anything unless I intentionally start an app.
When I was on stock ROM i tried an app killer with auto kill. So i'd kill apps that were displayed. Check back a few minutes later and everything was back running again..
So to sum up..a good app manager that works nicely with CM7?
Edit: i found something called privacy blocker but I think that wont let me prevent apps from running by themselves....
Edit-2: Nevermind, its not going to work I think...reading this made me realise that some apps me be terminated at start-up, but preventing from booting at a later point is near impossible. Too bad. http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=14889

Just ignore them, Android knows how to manage it's RAM effectively.

If you won´t use some apps, use TitaniumBackup (from Market) and freeze apps you are never using.

How to make your LG Optimus 2x run like a Rocket! (Requires Root)

You don’t need to change your ROM to get the best from your 2x, just a rooted stock ROM and a couple of apps that will change things dramatically. One thing I’ve noticed on the 2x is its memory management is too lenient and gets consumed quickly by background tasks etc. In no time I was down to 40-30Mb free memory and then my phone would run like a dog resulting in a reboot as the only solution.
Installing task and app killers are not the way, as they’ll only give you a short respite before the apps and background tasks you killed relaunch.
However, there is a solution.
1)Root your phone using SuperOneClick (piece of cake, instruction already on this forum)
2)Install “AutoKiller Memory Optimizer” by AndRS Studio free from the market
Optional
3) Install “Watchdog Task Manager” by Zolmut LLC (There’s a free or Paid version) I paid!
4) Install “Root App Remover” by Best of Best Android app
AutoKiller is not a task killer/manager it reconfigures Androids inbuilt memory manager to kill or suppress memory usage by applications and tasks. I now always have about 140-170MB free RAM at all times regardless of what I’m doing (but I do close my apps with the back button rather than click home)
AutoKiller Memory Optimizer Settings
I’ve used the ‘Extreme’ settings to ensure I have around 150MB free, and this makes a huge difference in everything I do with the phone.
----------Optional things you may want to consider-----------
Watchdog
Yeah, I know this is a task killer but Watchdog is different from other task mangers as it monitors CPU usage rather than free RAM, 3D Gallery for example is a CPU hog on my 2X, so I configured it to be killed if it consumes more than 30% CPU whilst running in the background, you’d be surprised what saps your battery!
Root App Remover
Uninstall the tosh supplied on the ROM, I removed the following, AndroidBackup (I use Titanium Backup), CarHome, F-Secure_Mobile_Security, SNS (If you’re not using the built in Facebook and Twitter app).
I also use LauncherPro with Beautiful Widgets to give my phone an almost HTC Sense look and feel and uninstalled LG Home using Root App Remover afterwards.
Hope it makes a difference for you, it did for me, vote if you like

What do you think having 140-170MB RAM free at all times actually does?
Guess what? Nothing.

I disagree, my phone runs way better now, maybe due to the fact that in part it’s killing more background tasks and enforcing better garbage collection. I want a phone that when I go to it, it responds immediately, I don’t want my phone to chug along whilst a new app is launched and android then decides to kill lower priority background tasks resulting in a choppy experience. These are my findings, and I wanted to share them. As a result using this particular application I now have a phone I can enjoy, rather than being frustrated by pausing, choppiness etc.
I would welcome your reasoning to why my post is useless, or explain why my phone is now running so well? Are you saying I’m suffering a placebo effect? Remember, this app is not a task killer, it reconfigures Androids internal memory management, see here:
http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
and
http://androidforums.com/eris-all-things-root/158846-autokiller-vs-setcpu.html#post1452069
Finally, I’m very happy with the results.
Spadb (HTC G1, HTC HD2[CM7], LG Optimus x2

We want to see some bench marks.

Thanks for sharing! My phone does become much more responsive
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App

I tried the app too and i can say that it works, I also did some of the advanced tweaks.
phone seems more responsive now.

Yes, me too. It's more responsive now. Also when I open app manager, the app list is a lot faster.I know it's more related to file read/write but still it's nice to finally able to browse with less waiting time.
Sent from my LG-P990 using XDA App

thx
good one and simple, thx

cann someone please post some benchmarks?

Here are some screenshots, tested with AnTuTu Benchmark
The first one is v10c stock, some apps like f-secure, carapp etc frozen, second one is with using autokiller memory with preset extreme, third one is to compare, this was while using cm7.1 rc
now we'll see if autokiller works stable ^^
edit: realized that with cm7 something seemed to be wrong with the sd-card, so don't forget to compare the single-scores

spadb said:
I disagree, my phone runs way better now, maybe due to the fact that in part it’s killing more background tasks and enforcing better garbage collection. I want a phone that when I go to it, it responds immediately, I don’t want my phone to chug along whilst a new app is launched and android then decides to kill lower priority background tasks resulting in a choppy experience. These are my findings, and I wanted to share them. As a result using this particular application I now have a phone I can enjoy, rather than being frustrated by pausing, choppiness etc.
I would welcome your reasoning to why my post is useless, or explain why my phone is now running so well? Are you saying I’m suffering a placebo effect? Remember, this app is not a task killer, it reconfigures Androids internal memory management, see here:
http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
and
http://androidforums.com/eris-all-things-root/158846-autokiller-vs-setcpu.html#post1452069
Finally, I’m very happy with the results.
Spadb (HTC G1, HTC HD2[CM7], LG Optimus x2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm sure Rusty knows what he is talking about. Thing is, this talk about "the more free ram the better" has been repeated so many times, and at the end of the day, it seems to be more about user preference.
The default LG ROM seems to allow tasks to run in the background until it reaches around 50MB free RAM, then it starts to close tasks one by one. For multi-taskers like me, this is fine, I love how I can switch between facebook, tweetdeck, miren browser, google+, gmail, and messaging without seeing the apps reload.
For some, they'd want to open a task, close it, and move on to another without looking back. I guess that is where the 100MB of RAM is good for.
If you guys will be looking at benchmarks, I can guarantee that you will have higher scores with RAM optimizers. As benchmarks do not test multitasking, they simply check the performance of your phone at that point in time. (Which is also why some modders pump up their CPU freq to insane values before doing their bench then posting it.)
I have nothing against AKMO, and I find it very effective for Froyo builds. But I would recommend that each user try it out themselves. It's not a "1 fix for all" thing.

spadb said:
I disagree, my phone runs way better now, maybe due to the fact that in part it’s killing more background tasks and enforcing better garbage collection. I want a phone that when I go to it, it responds immediately, I don’t want my phone to chug along whilst a new app is launched and android then decides to kill lower priority background tasks resulting in a choppy experience. These are my findings, and I wanted to share them. As a result using this particular application I now have a phone I can enjoy, rather than being frustrated by pausing, choppiness etc.
I would welcome your reasoning to why my post is useless, or explain why my phone is now running so well? Are you saying I’m suffering a placebo effect? Remember, this app is not a task killer, it reconfigures Androids internal memory management, see here:
http://andrs.w3pla.net/autokiller/details
and
http://androidforums.com/eris-all-things-root/158846-autokiller-vs-setcpu.html#post1452069
Finally, I’m very happy with the results.
Spadb (HTC G1, HTC HD2[CM7], LG Optimus x2
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'll just say this once: Free RAM is wasted RAM. If you feel´your phone is slow try adding some swap space

kiljacken said:
I'll just say this once: Free RAM is wasted RAM. If you feel´your phone is slow try adding some swap space
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Does O2X already support swap space in EXT? (Or are your referring to VM heap?)

Doesn't play well with Fr19 at all (2 reboots in 2 minutes). Maybe I touched some settings that I shouldn't though.

akyp said:
Doesn't play well with Fr19 at all (2 reboots in 2 minutes). Maybe I touched some settings that I shouldn't though.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, FR19 is one of the more stable ROMs out there. Try full wipe then reflash maybe.