The Official HTC Desire Thread

[dangel]

I used one for a while, and I found performance to be better when not killing things off. I find them useful if an app is buggy, but otherwise not much use. After finding the link above about them, it makes more sense.

Did you notice any improvement with them?

Depends - obviously if your killing stuff it's good to aware *what* you're actually nuking. Nuking stuff that needs to be running obviously impact performance, however killing stuff that's just 'there' (and eating cpu) cos you ran it sometime subtracts resources and that's a bad thing. It's nice to have the choice - and what works for me might well not work well for others but then my perspective isn't typical perhaps (hey, i've been playing with the SDK). I'm not digging around killing services - just front end user apps. The linked article is good - and I don't disagree with it in principle but not all apps behave themselves all of the time.

That said, i'm going to experiment a bit with this - perhaps write some rogue apps to deliberately provoke android..

[Agent]

however killing stuff that's just 'there' (and eating cpu) cos you ran it sometime subtracts resources and that's a bad thing.

Interesting - What I've read so far suggests that this can't happen under normal situations, unless it's a buggy app or one that needs to be running in the background (such as playing a MP3).

From that link I posted:

I see this come up over and over again. People saying that a task is running in the background and they think it is killing their battery or hogging all of their memory. So their natural reaction is to download a program made to kill tasks.

A content provider is active only while it’s responding to a request from a ContentResolver. And a broadcast receiver is active only while it’s responding to a broadcast message. So there’s no need to explicitly shut down these components. (From Googles own Dev page)

Now I know you know your stuff, so I'm wondering if I misunderstand how it's working now. Can you shed any more light on it?

[Singh400]

No And why not? It's perfectly simple to work out what to kill and what not (to me anyway) in ATK

Just by ATK being there causes harm to your system. Case in point, I installed it and watch my battery life drop off a cliff in 2-3 hours. There's a few blog posts that go into detail as to why you shouldn't use task killers.

I'll see if I can find the link(s) for you.

[dangel]

Now I know you know your stuff, so I'm wondering if I misunderstand how it's working now. Can you shed any more light on it?

I don't pretend to be an android expert - not by any means - but i think the gist is this:

A 'suspended' app (i.e. doing nothing) only really eats memory. This isn't bad, because the core OS is built to deal with memory management upon demand and free it (and or terminate said app) when necessary).

However.. if an app is active - i.e. eating cpu - then it's a potential problem for battery life because obviously that's sucking power (and *may* not be doing something you actively would *choose* to be happening in the background). In this case a task killer is warranted - whether or not it's the built in one or one of the (good) alternatives is neither here nor there.

Now, from my experience i'm getting good battery life and i am actively killing stuff - although very selectively. So this seems to be working OK for me but again, it's perfectly possibly i'm nuking the wrong thing and therefore affecting things negatively. This is true in two cases - either when an app takes a while to start up from scratch or when an app needs to be running to perform a very useful task (like picking up mail).

There's a risk my mentality is overshadowed by windows mobile - which by default minimized everything and didn't deal with memory in a very clever way (by comparison). So it's perfectly possible i'm wrong but the above makes sense to me (having read the article linked to) and i don't think the view has to be quite so absolute as "never ever use a task killer". Perhaps better to say "use with caution" (and perhaps a little common sense - killing an app designed to wake you up is daft).

Just by ATK being there causes harm to your system. Case in point, I installed it and watch my battery life drop off a cliff in 2-3 hours.

Can't say i've had the same experience - installing it hasn't negatively affected my phone AFAIK (ATK Pro).

[AndyCr15]

Task Killers will only ruin your battery if you use a widget. As we all know already though, widgets kill batteries.

Why would an app keep starting itself? Amazon MP3 store is a good example. I kill it, it comes back... why?

Some apps do things in the back ground, by design, but I don't necessarily want them doing that the whole time. I have some World Cup apps, I only really want them checking stuff while there are games on that I can't see... otherwise I'm going to kill them!

Also, imagine if your PC opened up every program you have when it boots up! You'd be closing windows like mad! (Yes, yes, Android is different, but I have lots of apps I'm only going to want once a month maybe, why should I leave it taking any resources at all?)

[Stringent]

I use Advanced Task Killer Free. Does the job, you can untick which tasks you don't want it to kill and it will remember them.

Seriously, if you boot your phone from cold, its amazing to see how much starts up. Reminds me of the Windows 98 days when things would just bung themselves in the startup menu or registry. I kill them because I am not using them.

All I am saying is that the long shut down might be related to an App thats running which is misbehaving. Try the Task Killer and see if it works.

[Funkstar]

In theory post 2.2 upgrades are easier, so assuming HTC Sense has been rewritten well, it shouldn't be too big a problem to move from 2.2 to 3.0.

The way I see it is the Desire was sold with the Sense UI. If HTC upgraded people to 3.0 and had to drop Sense, people would end up with a different UI than they are used to, not necessarily a good upgrade as far as many are concerned (my better half for example would throw a wobbly over that one). As Google are going to maintain support for the 2.1/2.2 branch for lower spec phones, I can see that as a good argument for HTC leaving the Desire at 2.2.

By the time 3.0 is out and available, the Desire will be 8-10 months old I believe. Definitely time for a new round of handsets I think. Also the Desire may be the headline phone in Europe, it it spanked by HTCs US super smartphones, if they don't release something similar in Europe with 2.2, they will have to do it for 3.0, or even leapfrog the Evo 4G and Droid incredible.

[Bunjiweb]

Google said st the I/O conference that they would be slowing the release schedule in favour of larger yearly releases (or something along those lines) so that Android fragmentation is not such an ongoing issue.

Ben

[AndyCr15]

Yeah, this will apparently be after Gingerbread has been released.

I'm not convinced people like HTC and Motorola will decide they don't want their own UI on top of it still...

This is what makes Android great, but it is also what causes the fragmentation. Personally I don't see fragmentation as that big an issue. No one moans at Microsoft, how many different versions of Windows are in use right now?

[Singh400]

Google said st the I/O conference that they would be slowing the release schedule in favour of larger yearly releases (or something along those lines) so that Android fragmentation is not such an ongoing issue.

Ben

Not sure I agree with that, I would rather they release as normal. As soon as a feature is ready, push it out.

Every platform suffers from fragmentation, but it is only becoming a somewhat of a huge issue with Android because it is still in its infancy.

No one moans at Microsoft, how many different versions of Windows are in use right now?

I get what you are trying to say, but that really can't be applied proper to this argument. Windows has backwards compatibility, and their release cycle is much longer. Not to mention that it is a full desktop based OS. And not a compact mobile based OS. It changes the ball game alot.

[G4Z]

I got an OTA update this morning on my desire.

Just restoring from my SD card now, no idea what changes might be in store.. exciting!

[Singh400]

I got an OTA update this morning on my desire.

Just restoring from my SD card now, no idea what changes might be in store.. exciting!

It won't be 2.2 if that is what you are thinking. Should be the normal 1.21.405.2 update.

[G4Z]

First thing I notice is that its reset all my widgets.. and friendstream doesn't work any more!

Fortunately, I never used it but its a little odd as I thought this was more of a sense update than an android one.

[G4Z]

Definately not fixed the facebook profile picture sync issue

[Rob_B]

Got mine this afternoon, been playing with it for ages, liking it but still got to get used to the menus.

Got a few apps on it, layar looks like it could be good.

Really need a screen protector though, fingerprint magnet or what! Anyone got a spare I can buy? Otherwise any suggestions for one?

[SiM]

I have a couple of spare screen protectors. PM me your address and I'll stick them in the post for you. They are the budget screen protectors though, but if fitted well they do the job very nicely!