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Comment by dustingetz | Hacker News Reader

interestingly, the comments on advanced task killer (android auto-kill app) show that most users have no idea how android apps work--they are autokilling many apps that autoserialized state to disk and don't consume a single resource until reopened. or, maybe it's me who misunderstands.

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This may be the way it's supposed to work, but at least on my Devour, it doesn't "feel" that way. The only way to make the device responsive - and to stop apps from hanging - is to use ATK on a regular basis, multiple times a day. I don't mind it - but it's just what I have to do.

I suspect placebo effect.

No placebo effect; on my N1, in sometimes gets to the point where opening application, scrolling, and so on, lag significantly. Even apps that are part of the OS slow down. After a task kill everything comes back to life and stays that way for quite a while. The before and after speed difference is very noticeable.

Well, yeah. Android moves things out of memory when there is memory pressure. You have to wait while this happens, and most currently-existing Android devices are massively underpowered. When you use a task killer, you are spending the time when you press the "kill" button, instead of at some other random time.

Android users that use task killers are like Windows users that disable their pagefiles.

Bottom line is that it works. The theory behind how it should work may be nice and dandy, but the reality is that it doesn't work as advertised. Whether it's because I haven't waited enough (why would I need to wait in the first place?) or whatever other reason, the unit slows down over time quite a bit and killing processes brings it back to life.

The fact that current devices are underpowered has nothing to do with the issue. N1 works just fine after a reboot but slowly degrades in performance. If it was "massively underpowered" if would not have worked properly in the first place.

I also don't understand why there is no easy way to disable some applications from auto-starting. For example I've never used the MP3 Store application, but it always starts up. There are a number of similar apps that do this and to my knowledge there's no way to prevent this from happening.

The N1 is not one of the underpowered phones; the Dream and Magic are. The fact that you need to kill "processes" (which is not what the task killer does, btw) means that there is a bug in some app you use regularly; narrow it down and fix it, and your phone will be fine.

This is why I think Apple adding multi-tasking to OS 4.0 is a mistake. Nobody really missed it, and now a lot of people are going to have to concern themselves with understanding what is going on, when they do not want to. Or, they are going to wonder why their new device is so slow, and the battery does not last as long.

I understand people wanting to listen to Pandora in the background, I do not think there are that many people like that. I do not think they warrant this huge change.

I can't disagree more. Multi-tasking is inevitable it just so happens that this is one place where Android devices beat the iPhone to the punch. In time both platforms will mature and the task switching will get smoother.

I own a N1 and as for listening to music while I do something else I don't even think about it any more it just seems weird to not be able to do that.

As a device the N1 is very polished and for the most part the apps worth downloading are pretty smooth but every now and again I do have to resort to the task killer.

A good task killer is a must have for development or when testing beta apps.

Can you tell me what other use you get out of Multitasking?

On the iPhone, we already have notifications, so IM does not need to be running.

And you didn't address my point, I can understand you wanting and understanding it. The large numbers of people getting into smartphones DO NOT.

to follow up for future readers, i have an HTC incredible, played with a task killer, and didnt see a difference. and, the shortened app startup time from unhibernating an app is pretty awesome.

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