App Killer?!?!

[Scott70]

Forget Angry Birds Space, is "Your App Manager" the app killer people have been asking for?

[TnTexas]

It's way past time if it is.

[Grammaknits02]

It seems that it is...however, as I stated in my new thread, it does not have any instructions, and it doesn't say what would happen if we tried to kill an app that we shouldn't...for instance, would we get a message saying the app can't be closed, or would we end up killing our tablet.  Also, there is no exit button for the app itself, so does it stay running after we back out to the home screen?

[Scott70]

I sent the developer an email with a couple of your questions, they got back to me in less than 24 hours.

It will not kill apps the nook needs to run.

It doesn't delete apps from your account locker.

I didn't ask about if their app continues to run after backing out of it but given the quick turn around on their answer to me I bet they'll be happy to answer you too.

One thing I did see that I'm going to bubble up through the store is the NookHwTest app that is in there but not normally accessible, it would be cool to be able to run that when trouble shooting for customers.

[Grammaknits02]

I emailed them too and received a reply within 5 minutes...but I forgot to ask if the actual app closes once I exit...

[Doreenpv]

So after playing a game, let's say, instead of closing it from the game, are you suppose to go to

App Mgr and close it from there??

[Czechboy]

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Doreenpv wrote:

So after playing a game, let's say, instead of closing it from the game, are you suppose to go to

App Mgr and close it from there??

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I usually exit the app with either a left swipe along the bottom task bar, or use the "exit" method provided by the app itself.  Then I go into the My App Manager and make sure it closed.  Some apps, seem to stick around and run in the background.  If you do this for a while on your nook, you can get a feel for which apps you need to do this with, and which ones you don't (because they close completely).

[Doreenpv]

Thank you and laurel for you :-))

[Czechboy]

Oh, there's another bonus feature you can use My App Manager for.  If you were fortunate enough to have the ability to sideload non-B&N apps when you first bought you NT (like me), and then when you wanted to run them you had to "search" for them.  With this app, you can see all the apps on your device, not just the B&N ones, and you can launch them directly from here.  A little easier than having to remember their name and do a search for them.

[jbitgood]

Using an app killer can actually shorten your battery life and make the device perform poorly. The Android platform automatically re-allocates resources as necessary, so it's better just to let it do its thing on its own.

[TnTexas]

jbitgood: Using an app killer can actually shorten your battery life and make the device perform poorly. The Android platform automatically re-allocates resources as necessary, so it's better just to let it do its thing on its own.

Really? This is the first I've heard this and I've been around android devices for awhile now.

[Czechboy]

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jbitgood wrote:

Using an app killer can actually shorten your battery life and make the device perform poorly. The Android platform automatically re-allocates resources as necessary, so it's better just to let it do its thing on its own.

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Well I know that's what Android claims to do, but pretty much every post and review I've ever read about it says that Android is not very adept at stopping apps and reallocating the reclaimed resources.  Not saying you're wrong, just saying I never heard that before...

[jp51552]

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jbitgood wrote:

Using an app killer can actually shorten your battery life and make the device perform poorly. The Android platform automatically re-allocates resources as necessary, so it's better just to let it do its thing on its own.

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Battery Life is not affected by how resourses may or may not be allocated.  It is dependent on the number of full charge/discharge cycles, its operating environment and the load on it (how much power is being drawn).  For example if you were to turn off WiFi, reduce the brightness of your display and reduce the volumn of any audio being played (the three biggest power drains.) your battery life would be extended.  Contrawise if you keep your WiFi on are at the extreme distance from he AP (access point) (the WiFi hardware monitors signal strength and varies the power needed to maintain the connection.);  have the brightness turned up to its highest level and play Metalica at full volum let your battery discharge all the way down until your NT dies and then fast charge it your battery wont last.

Killing an app (or the number of apps running) wont effect the battery life.

[bobstro]

There's a distinction between "the life of the battery", as in charge cycles it will be able to sustain over its lifetime, and "battery consumption", as in usable hours per charge. As of Android 2.2, task killers were generally described as detrimental, as Android included a pretty good memory management scheme that had been lacking in earlier versions. Many older "task killers" killed of system tasks that then had to be restarted, thereby increasing battery consumption as they fired up again, sometimes over and over again, preventing the device from entering deep sleep normally.

It is possible to tweak the memory algorithm -- SuperCharge and other tweaks use this -- in ways that can make the device more responsive by altering the triggers for Android to do memory cleanup. This is preferable to just killing apps willy-nilly.

Generally, if you back out of an app (using the back button) as opposed to just flipping away, it is supposed to exit cleanly. If you do just flip away (e.g. press the 'n' button), it remains in the background. If you do have a hog running in the background, it can take a few minutes for it to be killed off, so this is probably the benefit people see with task killers.