[gortyargen]

Something I'm not sure on and would appreciate a bit of insight please.I installed a task killer and had a look at what was running...woooo loads of stuff. I thought that they had closed down. I killed everything and saw the memory go back up to 96 Meg. As a test I opened the browser hit the back button and using task killer again I saw that the browser was open and memory had dropped to 89. Not unexpected.I then went back to browser and used the x at the top right which I assumed closed the browser. Back to task killer and it shows as still open. The same happens for other apps I open, eg, Astro. I even used the exit from the home menu but it was still running according to task killer.Is that the way android works? Tasks need to be killed? They cant be closed or am I doing something wrong. Of course this would explain why my PDN runs like a bucket at times. Too many things open and memory in the basement levels.

 

[rockwater]

Maybe it is because tablets do not like have an end button like the phones do and the end button on the phones act as a kind of task killer for the app. I know that for my 7inch table running android 1.5 and my 10.2 tablet running android 2.1 both require to me quite frequently run task killer to close down apps sucking up precious memory.

 

[davidr]

There has been some discussion on this.. I am far from an Android expert, but the way I remember the discussion is that Android leaves apps running until it needs the capacity they occupy and then takes it.. this way it can start those apps up quicker if they are called again before the memory is given up to something else..Also, I think I remember someone saying that Android allocates a fixed amount of memory to any app and doesn't exceed that.. so as long as there is enough left to allocate to a newly opening app, then that is all it needs and having more available will not result in more being allocated to it.I am sure the experts will come in and clean up my mess if I made one..

 

[clockworx]

Nerd it up, everyone

FAQ: Why You Shouldn't Be Using a Task Killer with Android

 

[gortyargen]

FAQ: Why You Shouldn?t Be Using a Task Killer with Android[/url]

Thanks. Great article and the comments were even better.Not surprising to see that there was a trade off between killing apps and battery life. It made sense because when I'm overseas I don;t use my iphone except on wifi and with the phone on airplane mode except for wifi enabled the battery lasts for days. I guess this all comes back to why we don't have a complete sleep mode on the PDN. Something is beavering away in the background using CPU cycles and polling systems.

 

[mogrith]

Ok Now AMM (Android Memory Manager) makes sense. It allows you to tweak the 'trip points' of when apps get shutdown etc.