Task killer?

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

Task killer on android phone, yes or no? What's the latest advise?

[LwnmwnMan2]

I run Advance Task Killer (free) and have the widget on the front screen.

Whenever my phone starts slowing down, I just tap it.

If that doesn't work, then I hit the power off button to turn the screen off and back on.

It works for me, although I know it's not recommended.

[LMITOUT]

No.

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

Here is another question, what is the difference between restart and shut down other then the obvious? When I use restart it seems to do more and takes longer.

[pureinsanity]

yes to task killer. I use it daily. I use to shut my phone down once a day now I go weeks with out shutting it down because of ATK

[IamZombie]

I used to run one, but then I uninstalled it because I read it wasn't good for the phone.

[LwnmwnMan2]

I've switched from ATK to Advance Task MANAGER.

It works better FOR ME, and has more options for the app.

[Powerstroke]

A restart takes longer than a shutdown because it is doing a shutdown and a startup.

[DTro]

I recently installed "Fast Reboot".

It basically shuts everything down with a push of a button.

I installed it because every so often I get a GPS hang or browser hang. I simply push "Fast Reboot" and seconds later everything works great.

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

So I just read a review on the new Touchwiz interface coming out for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and it includes advanced task killer. I guess Samsung finds it useful, so who's right about these task killers then??

[LMITOUT]

It's a system manager and it looks like Samsung offers it on their phones as well that have Touchwiz.

Looking forward to the update to my Tab!

[RuKiddingMe]

Used to use task killers, but have decided over time that there is no real benefit to a task killer, the Android OS takes care of itself just fine and keeps getting better with each release. Plus I found that just about every task you kill pops back up in a matter of seconds, mainly the obscure processes.

I would recommend you run without a task killer and see if you can really tell a difference.

The difference with the Samsung one is that, like Limitout said its a system manager and is only run when you long press the home button (that is how it was on my captivate) and allows to stop a process, really no different then going in to app manager and forcing close a rouge app, task killers are active processes that run in the background using resources and automatically (using that very loosely) take care of processes for you, either pre-defined or customized to your liking.

[Wish-I-Were-Fishn]

They don't need to run until you tell it to. Depends on your settings.

[LMITOUT]

I don't know what the system manager is like that comes with Touchwiz on Samsung smart phones, but the version that came with Touchwiz on my Tab is hardly a "task killer". They call it a "task manager" and cannot be compared to a real task killer such as ATK. It is very similar to doing a ctrl-alt-del on a PC where you can view running programs and force them to close.

I would have been very surprised if a manufacturer included an app such as ATK just because it is too powerful and in the wrong hands it can temporarily mess up your phone if used incorrectly and they try to keep these devices as dummy-proof as they can for the most part.